


Us Without Each Other

by catherineflowers



Series: Me Without You [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Ableism, Canon-Typical Incest References, Canon-Typical Misogyny, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Heavy Angst, Me dealing with my s8 rage, Multi, Post-Season/Series 08 Finale, my catharsis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:26:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 74,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24453628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherineflowers/pseuds/catherineflowers
Summary: Continuing the events from "Brienne Without Jaime" and "Jaime Without Brienne".
Relationships: Addam Marbrand/Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister/Addam Marbrand, Jaime Lannister/Addam Marbrand/Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: Me Without You [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1657714
Comments: 429
Kudos: 258





	1. The Only Child

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CaptainTarthister](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainTarthister/gifts).



> Banner by the lovely [@WakingDreams82](https://twitter.com/WakingDreams82) on Twitter.
> 
> This story is a direct continuation of events in [Brienne Without Jaime](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21717478/chapters/51803218) and [Jaime Without Brienne.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23066707/chapters/55173427) You definitely need to read both first for this to make sense!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I am the only child the gods let him keep."

The snow started to fall again.

There was a strong gust of wind, strong enough to take Brienne’s breath away, strong enough that she had to close her eyes against the force of it. When she opened them again, the snow that had been frozen in the air began to fall.

As the wind picked up, the bodies around them started to disintegrate. The wind caught them, blew them apart as if they were little more than ash. Addam poked one with a tentative finger; it fell into dust at his feet. He jumped back with a cry.

The sound echoed off the buildings around them. The snow and the ash blew together, made a blizzard.

Jaime wasn’t there.

Brienne and Addam realised at the same moment – both looked around in a panic. Brienne drew Oathkeeper.

“Where did he go? Did you see?”

Addam shook his head. “He was looking up at the keep and then –”

“Bran?” asked Brienne. “Did he take him? Did he get to him somehow?” She looked around frantically for her horse, but he was gone. Fled most like, from this frozen city of horror and death.

“Here!” Addam shouted down to her from Sunchaser’s back, holding out a hand. Brienne grasped his wrist, and he pulled her up to sit in front of him on the saddle.

She winced at the sharp pain that flared between her legs as she settled down – Sunchaser was broader across the back than the small rounsey Venture – straddling him made all the soreness in her pelvis hurt anew.

“Hm,” said Addam from behind her. “Take the reins, I can’t see to ride now.”

Brienne nodded and wrapped the reins about her left hand, Oathkeeper still drawn in her right. She dug her knees in hard to Sunchaser’s flanks and galloped forward through the city streets.

Snow poured around them; bodies flew apart in their wake. Addam clung to her, an arm around her waist. She could feel the warmth of his legs behind hers, the warmth of his breath on her neck. Sunchaser wove through the streets, fearless and fast. Towards the Keep.

She couldn’t quite look at the Keep.

The Keep wasn’t there, the Keep was something else. A black shape stamped on the sky. Worse than a dragon, somehow – more terrifying.

Brienne’s head swam – the air was thick and smelled like something sweet and sharp and foul.

Then – in the dust, in the snow … a figure walked towards them. Thin and limping, his long hair blowing about his scarred face. Quite naked.

“Jaime …” Brienne breathed. She pulled the reins, and Sunchaser stopped.

Addam dismounted. Ran to Jaime’s side. Brienne lagged behind, shuddering with pain as she clambered clumsily from the saddle.

She recoiled as soon as she touched Jaime. His skin was on _fire_! He smoked where the snow fell on him, like he was burning the worst fever anyone had ever burned. Hot enough to turn the snow to steam.

Across his chest, down both arms, down one leg, there was a horrible mark. Black and red, sore and angry. Brienne gasped, a hand going to cover her mouth.

There had been a man once, on Tarth, who had been caught in a storm out on the meadows. Brienne, little more than a girl, had seen him carried to the maester through the corridors of Evenfall, barely alive. His body had looked like Jaime’s body – black with bruise and with a scar that snaked across his skin in violent twists and branches.

Lightning had hit him, her father had said. The man had not lived through the night.

But as she watched, the mark faded from Jaime’s flesh. The mottled bruising seemed to shift and swirl and then retreat into his skin. And then he was just Jaime, naked and frail, falling into Addam’s arms. His skin just warm, just average. Just Jaime.

Brienne yanked her cloak from her back and wrapped it about him. His eyes fluttered open.

“What happened?” Addam asked. “Did – did Bran do this? Where – where is he?”

“I think I fought him,” Jaime said. His voice little more than a whisper.

“Fought him?” demanded Brienne. “But – you don’t even have a sword!”

“Not like that. I – I used … the trees.”

“What? I – _what_?”

“He’s dead.”

Brienne gaped at him. Scarcely able to breathe.

“I think I’m the King now.”

Addam laughed. Jaime did not. Addam looked at Brienne, his eyes scared and uncertain.

“We should get him inside,” she said. Practicalities first – they could find out what happened when Jaime felt better.

“Inside where?”

They had the whole city to choose from – the inhabitants blew about their feet, after all. “Let’s get up to the keep,” she said, though the idea terrified her. “I need to see that Bran is truly dead.”

Addam nodded – together they lifted Jaime onto Sunchaser’s back. Addam scrambled up behind him to hold him in place. Jaime sagged, weak and exhausted, against him. He had a strange smile on his face.

“I miss riding,” he said. And then he was asleep.

They walked Sunchaser through the Keep’s postern gate and into the deep gloom of the outer yard. The snow fell thick and hard around them and although that primal terror was gone, Brienne was filled with a sense of foreboding. The throne room …

From afar, it had looked so strange. Now, it looked sad. Empty. Overgrown? There was a tree winding its way through the windows. There had never been trees here.

“What is that?” Addam asked.

“I don’t know,” Brienne breathed.

The huge doors hung ajar – was this where Jaime had been? Where he had come from? She pushed them further open.

Inside, the air was cold and still and tasted like winter. Dust blew about the floor, the roof was open to the sky. Snow fell through the silence, twinkling and glittering in the dappled light from the branches of the tree.

The tree …

The tree was _enormous_. It dominated the room, twisting and weaving around columns and windows and buttresses alike. Roots through the floor, branches through the ceiling, black and beautiful and horrifying.

“What the fuck is that?” Addam asked again. “How did a tree …?”

Brienne could only shake her head. Utterly dumbfounded.

She moved closer. At first, she thought the tree was made from a dark wood, like the heart of an ebony. But up close, she could see that it wasn’t. The bark of it was burnt black, cracked with heat. Inside, the thing _glowed_. Red embers.

As she passed, a branch caught in her hair. She turned to free herself, but it didn’t hurt, didn’t pull. The branch … _caressed_ her. Soft as a lover’s touch.

Brienne recoiled.

As she watched, the tree’s burning bark cooled and hardened, the cracks disappearing so entirely the thing gleamed as if polished _._

It was then she noticed the face.

Just below where the trunk forked – a long, thin face with a mysterious smile. Like those carved into the Heart Trees of the North. It looked like … could it? Did he do this? Had Bran the Broken carved his own likeness into the trunk?

“Perhaps Jaime knows?” Addam’s voice echoed in the still air, like the fiddle of the minstrel who had stood vigil with her over Cersei’s bones.

_I’m sorry, sweetling._

Brienne jumped. Not a voice, not really. A whisper from another room, an echo …

“We should leave,” she said.

“Leave?”

“Get out of the city. This … this …”

“I thought you wanted to kill Bran?”

“Jaime did it. He said ...”

“Jaime was raving.”

Brienne looked away. That was hard to refute – Jaime seemed so pale and frail asleep in Addam’s arms, not at all like a man who had killed a king with his bare hands.

It was then she noticed Jaime’s cane on the floor in front of the tree. She bent to pick it up. His clothes were nowhere to be seen, though.

“We need to know what happened here,” Addam continued. “All the people. What this tree is.”

Brienne chewed her lip.

“We need to stay until we know what happened to Jaime.”

She sighed. Addam thought that would sway her, did he? Of course he did. “We’d best find somewhere safe to spend the night, then. The top of a tower, somewhere we can defend.”

“The White Sword Tower? You can see over the whole city from the – the chambers at the top.”

The Lord Commander’s chambers. Even the mention of them made Brienne’s chest feel tight. Addam was right, though; they were an excellent vantage point, and easily defensible. There was a nice, soft, feather bed, too. A proper privy.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s get Jaime up there. I’ll go back for Sapphire, Nira and Alara then.”

Brienne was glad to get out of the throne room – it was a dread place, full of the ghosts of evil and ambition. They made their way back across the outer yard and through the portcullis into the Keep’s Middle Bailey.

Silence. Dust and wind and snow. A swinging door slamming in the kennels, a curtain flapping from the Sept. A creaking banner on the walls of Maegor’s Holdfast, the banner of the three-eyed raven.

The door to the White Sword Tower was closed, but not locked. Addam dismounted, struggling to take Jaime’s weight. Brienne helped him – Jaime did not so much as stir.

They left Sunchaser to wander the Lower Bailey while they carried Jaime into the tower between them.

Inside, the place echoed like a tomb. The white-tiled floors were covered with a fine sheen of dust, and the narrow staircase was all shadows. All echoes and silence.

“How is he still asleep?” Addam complained after they had all-but dropped Jaime for the twentieth time on the stairs.

“I have no idea!” replied Brienne from between gritted teeth. Climbing stairs carrying half the weight of a full-grown man was not doing her pelvis any good. It was also, strangely, making her feel like she needed to make her water _now._

As they climbed the stairs, they passed each of the small cells belonging to the sworn brothers. They were, of course, as silent as the rest of the Keep. But every door was open. Every cell had a pile of dust in the exact centre of the floor.

Was that how Bran’s Ravens had stood? Blankly doing nothing in their cells with the doors open? Stood there until they were needed, stood there until they died, killed by the King who had taken their minds.

The door of the Lord Commander’s chambers was open too. Brienne had been dreading this moment, but in truth, it was the least traumatic place they had visited in the city so far. It had always been a comfortable, sunny sort of room – warm wooden floors, soft leather chairs, burnished armour on the walls. Even now, amid this dead city, it looked the same – warm and inviting. There was not so much as a pile of dust on the floor – the Lord Commander of the Ravens had most likely died elsewhere.

Addam and Brienne carried Jaime to the bed. Addam removed Brienne’s cloak from his naked form. Settled him onto the pillows and covered him with blankets. Brienne propped his cane against the bedstead.

Jaime rolled onto his side, his golden hair spread out over the pillow, muttering something nonsensical. He curled up into a ball and put his thumb in his mouth like a small child.

Brienne turned away. Addam was looking at her – watching her watch Jaime. He took a step back and looked at his feet as if caught at something shameful.

“I need to make my water before I go back to the carriage,” Brienne said. “See if you can get a fire lit, can you? Maybe find some food while I’m gone?”

“Yes, S _er_ ,” Addam replied with something of a sour face. Was he _angry_ at her, too? For being concerned about Jaime?

“Or we could be cold and hungry if you prefer?”

Addam’s brow furrowed further. Brienne shook her head and sighed before leaving the room and heading to the privy. She did not bother to say goodbye before she went back down the stairs towards Sunchaser.

Best that Addam and Jaime be left alone together, since they seemed to be quite obsessed with each other these days.

Brienne gritted her teeth as she rode Sunchaser hard through the city streets, only partly from the pain of riding. The two of them would drive her quite mad, she thought. Jaime seemed to be intent on pushing her at Addam, and Addam seemed to be watching her every reaction to everything that Jaime said or did.

The situation was intolerable. Even her former handmaids were far too invested. Suddenly it seemed that everyone was fascinated by what she did with her cunt.

She had liked it far better when her relationships had been private. Her own.

The snow had slowed and dwindled by the time she left the city, and she was pleased to see Venture had found a little courage – Addam’s rounsey was at the side of the road a few minutes from the city gates, chewing on some grass.

Brienne managed to tie a rope to his bridle, trotting him alongside Sunchaser as she made her way back to the carriage.

“Ser!” Nira and Alara, Sapphire in arms, ran to her as soon as they heard hoofbeats on the road. They looked at her with wide, terrified eyes. The fact that she had come back alone with both horses.

“What happened to Ser Ginger? And Limpy Lion? Are they hurt, did they die? What happened?” Alara gabbled as Brienne dismounted. She was all but limping herself with the discomfort in her pelvis now – she was grateful that she could sit atop the carriage for the ride back.

“They’re well,” Brienne reassured the girl. “Well, Ser Jaime … he’s – he’s … resting, I think. Something happened between him and King Bran, but … I – we don’t know what as yet.”

Sapphire wailed for her mother, reaching out desperately with big, sad eyes.

“She’s not been happy,” said Nira as Brienne took the babe from her arms.

Brienne nodded. “Poor girl, this is all so different for her. She has little idea of what’s happening.”

Sapphire clung to her neck, whimpering. It was all but impossible to cuddle a babe properly in full plate, and Brienne knew what Sapphire wanted – the comfort and warmth of her mother’s breast. She took her into the carriage, pulling at the buckles on her breastplate as she went. Addam and Jaime could stand to wait a while.

Sapphire latched on with a frantic whimper, still sniffling even as she suckled. Holding onto Brienne’s sweaty tunic with gentle little fingers.

Nira and Alara followed Brienne into the carriage. Waited impatiently for her to tell them more.

“I’m not truly certain what happened,” Brienne sighed, kicking off her boots to try to wiggle some blood back into her frozen feet. “But everyone in the city … _everyone_ … they’re all dead. Man, woman and child, tens of thousands of them. Bran the Broken killed them all.”

“Truly?” asked Nira. “How?”

Brienne shook her head. “I don’t know. They were dead when we arrived, standing frozen.”

“All of them? A whole city?”

“Yes. And then they … they disintegrated. Like dust or ash or …” It sounded ridiculous. Like she was a lackwit reciting a drunken story in some tavern. Both women gaped at her, not understanding at all. “There’s nothing left of anyone but dust.”

Once Sapphire was fed and sleeping soundly, Brienne donned her armour, hitched the horses to the carriage and set off for the city.

Nira and Alara sat up top of the carriage with her, capes wrapped about them tightly, huddled together for warmth in the biting wind. The snow hadn’t started again, but the dust blew about like a blizzard as soon as they got close to the city gates.

“Is this … the people?” Alara asked in a small voice.

Brienne nodded.

“That’s horrible,” said Nira. “There’s so much of it.”

Sapphire snuggled into the crook of Brienne’s arm, sleeping soundly. As Brienne looked down at her, she rolled onto her side and slipped her thumb into her mouth. Just – just like Jaime. Brienne swallowed – she had never seen Sapphire do that before. But she was older now, almost a year old. She woke less in the night, and was needing less and less of her mother’s milk. Perhaps the thumb-sucking was just a part of that.

The carriage trundled through the rubble of the city gates, both Nira and Alara staring wide-eyed about them. They scanned every shadow, snapped their eyes to every movement, every stone skittering in the wind. But nothing lived here. No people, no animals.

“It’s so big,” Nira whispered as the carriage wound its way through the Street of the Sisters, the great looming shape of the Dragonpit behind them. “There’s just so much of it.”

“Have you never seen a city before, Nira?” Brienne asked.

The brown-haired girl shook her head. “I’ve never left the Westerlands, Ser. Never even been to Lannisport, neither.”

“Half a million people live – _lived_ here,” Brienne told her.

“No wonder there’s so much dust,” said Alara. It was almost humorous, but none of them laughed.

It was all but dark by the time they reached the Keep – the tree protruding from the roof and windows of the throne room was little more than a silhouette against the sky. Brienne rode past and tried not to think of it.

Sapphire woke from her nap as soon as they got upstairs, feeling the warmth from the fire and hearing Addam’s familiar voice as he greeted them.

Addam had indeed got a fire going in the grate of the Lord Commander’s chambers and had put a fireguard in front of the hearth to keep Sapphire safe. He’d set out something of a supper on the table, too. He’d also brought some of the soft feather mattresses up from the other Kingsguards’ cells and laid them out on the floor by the fireplace so that they might all sleep together where it was safe.

She noticed he’d taken off his cloak and his armour, unlaced his tunic and untied his hair. The firelight made his hair glow rich copper and the hair on his muscular chest …

Brienne looked away as she undid her own cloak, right into the eyes of Alara who raised her eyebrows and grinned. Brienne felt a blush rising in her cheeks and stubbornly ignored Alara with a scowl.

Jaime was still asleep, sprawled out face-down in the Lord Commander’s bed. The bed that had once belonged to both of them, though never at the same time.

“Sunchaser and Venture are in the stables,” she told Addam as she passed Sapphire to him so that she might remove her own armour. “There was plenty of hay, they were happy enough.”

“Venture? You found him?”

“Oh. Yes – he hadn’t gone far. Just outside the city.”

Sapphire wanted to get down and explore, so Addam set her on her feet and helped Brienne untie her cloak. He passed her a glass of wine with a soft little smile on his face. He did look _very_ good tonight, Brienne had to admit. She found herself smiling back. Sitting beside him at the table. Close enough that their legs all but touched.

“I found this in the wine cellar, in a cask marked with a crown,” he said as he poured a glass for Nira and one for Alara too. “I’d say it was meant for the king only.”

Brienne couldn’t recall a time she’d ever seen Bran drink wine at Winterfell – most like it had been Cersei’s, she thought.

Sapphire came back to her mother, arms raised to be picked up. Brienne hauled the babe onto her lap and tore off a chunk of the surprisingly fresh bread for her to chew.

Alara gave her wine glass a swirl and downed it all in a single gulp. “So that’s what rich man’s wine tastes like. Much the same, if I’m honest.”

Addam laughed uproariously.

Brienne sipped hers, too. “It’s no dandelion ale,” she said, mostly to spite Cersei’s ghost. If that viperous bitch were to haunt anything in the Keep, Brienne felt sure it would be her wine vats.

Addam uncovered a platter of cheese and grapes he had found and got up to take a small kettle of soup from the fireplace. “This can’t have happened long ago,” he said. “All the … all the deaths. The food in the kitchens was fresh. Even the bread had not had a chance to go hard.”

“Time was frozen,” said a voice from behind them. Jaime’s voice.

He sat up in bed. Blinking as if to clear the sleep from his eyes.

“Jaime. Are you hungry?” Addam asked him. He offered a bowl of the soup.

Jaime nodded. He got up from under the covers and got to his feet without realising he was naked. He looked down at himself in confusion. “What – what happened to my clothes?”

“We found you like that. Wandering down from the Keep,” Brienne told him.

“I was? I don’t remember that.”

“You were quite delirious,” Addam said.

Jaime didn’t move. Made no attempt to cover himself, either. Brienne passed Sapphire to Nira and got up to rummage in the Lord Commander’s drawers. Whoever had succeeded her had fine taste indeed. She found Jaime a pair of black leather breeches. An embroidered linen tunic, too.

Jaime took them from her, looking up at her with confusion on his face. “I – I love you?”

Brienne fumbled the drawer. Shut the tip of her finger in it, hard enough to produce a blood blister. “That was a long time ago, Jaime,” she said with a glare.

“Oh. Yes – yes, of course. I’m … my head’s not right. Not in the right order at all. I’m sorry.”

Brienne went back to the table. Sat down to eat her soup and drink her wine and pour herself another glass to chase it down.

Jaime came to the table, still looking quite confused. His breeches unlaced and his tunic on backwards.

He took the seat between Nira and Alara, and Addam put his soup bowl in front of him. Passed him a spoon and some bread. Jaime looked at both as if he hadn’t the faintest clue what they were.

Addam sat down and drank his wine, too. Brienne felt him trying not to look at her even as she tried not to look at Jaime.

“Time was frozen?” she asked, in an attempt to resurrect the conversation he had interrupted by waking. “Do you know what happened here?”

Jaime nodded. He closed his eyes tight, clenching his fist around the spoon. “I killed Bran the Broken. I’ve been killing him for a long time. He tried to stop me, and he killed the city.”

Addam and Brienne looked at each other. Nira and Alara looked away.

“What does that mean?” Brienne asked gently. “Is he truly dead?”

“Yes. Did you see the throne room? The – the tree? He’s inside it. I crushed him with it.”

“He’s inside the tree?!” asked Addam. He looked quite worried now. Quite worried that Jaime had lost his wits.

Jaime nodded. Seemed to remember how to use a spoon and took a tentative sip of soup from it.

“Does this have something to do with the Black Hole?” Brienne asked.

“It didn’t change anything,” said Jaime. “Not a fucking thing. I was happy. You were happy. But the world still went to shit.”

“What does that mean?”

“I crushed him. With a tree.” Jaime gave a short bark of laughter. “Is that more honourable than a stab in the back, do you think?”

“Jaime.” Brienne reached out for him. Put her hand on his face. “We don’t understand.”

Jaime looked at her, his eyes wide and green and frightened. “I can feel your love,” he said.

Brienne took her hand off his cheek.

“Addam’s, too,” Jaime continued. “And – and Nira’s and Alara’s. I can feel it all. See it, too.”

“What?” asked Addam.

Jaime shrugged. He turned to Nira. “You. You were in love with a woman called Darlyne. She worked in a tavern, and you liked to watch her lifting the barrels. You liked the way her arms looked. She loved you too, but … you only had one night together. That night at the farm, when the Ravens came.”

Nira looked at Brienne with wide, terrified eyes. “Ser?”

Jaime turned to Alara on his other side. “You loved a boy when you were young. Conin, his name was. You liked him because he wasn’t afraid to be rude to the farmer at the end of the lane where you lived. He seemed like fun. But – he got another girl with child, and he married her, instead.”

“How do you know that?” Alara asked. “I was all of sixteen.”

Jaime didn’t pause to answer. He turned to Addam next. “You’ve been in love four times. Miranna – a friend of your mother’s when you were a boy. She was the first time you noticed womanhood – she was black-haired and pale-skinned, and you loved the way she wore her hair in a chignon. You cried when she went home at the end of her visit, and your mother couldn't comfort you. The next was a serving girl at Casterly Rock, while you were a page. She was older, too – she made a man of you behind the kennels, and you brought her a bunch of daisies the next day to say thank you. The third one broke your heart. Palina Wode. She was a match for you, and you could have wed, but she was already betrothed to another, and her father would not hear of breaking it. You still have a lock of her hair hidden behind a brick in the fireplace at Ashemark. The fourth –”

“I think that’s enough,” Addam said.

Jaime nodded. He looked to Brienne.

She held up a hand to stop him before he started. “How are you doing that?” she asked.

“It’s so simple,” he said. “It comes off you. Like a smell or … a – a sound. It’s like hearing you talk.”

“How?!”

“I think I became the man I was always meant to be.”

“Bran? Bran did it?”

Jaime shook his head. He grabbed the hem of his tunic. Pulled it up to show his belly and his chest. There, across it, was that same black mark he had worn when they had found him walking through the city. Seething under his skin, like bruising or burning. Forks and twists and branches and –

“Oh!” said Brienne. “It’s the black tree, isn’t it. You wear its mark!”

As they looked, it faded back into his skin, leaving no trace on his scarred body whatsoever. Jaime dropped his tunic.

“It’s been talking to me … or I’ve been feeling it for quite a while. While I was looking after you, while I was looking after Sapphire. At the hut, setting the traps with Weslar, and doing the washing and being a father. When I wasn’t being a Lannister.”

“What?!” said Alara. “Doing the washing and looking after your own babe turned you into a mind-reading wizard? Half the population of Westeros should be able to talk to trees! The female half, anyway.”

Jaime laughed. A broad smile split his face, and he looked more like the handsome man of his youth than the bitter, sardonic shell he’d been of late. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it.”

“No,” Alara said. “Sounds like those bricks hit you harder than we thought.”

But there was no denying what he could do, Brienne thought. No denying that mark, either.

“What’s the tree in the throne room?” she asked. “How did it grow there? It – it’s so big.”

“I don’t truly know,” Jaime said. He ate some more of his soup. “But I … I made it. I called it up from the ground with all these – these feelings I can feel, and –”

He put his spoon down. Looked Brienne in the eyes. “It killed Bran so that I could take his place.”

“On the throne?” Brienne gaped.

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“That’s madness! You – you don’t want to be King! Isn’t that what you told me? That’s what you told me when you thought Tyrion was plotting to put you on the throne!”

“I know.”

“Then what? Why? There’s not even a city for you to rule over!”

“Not yet,” Jaime said.

“You’re going to declare yourself King? How is that – how would we even –”

“It’s more than that.”

“More than _what_? There are five of us, Jaime. A team of bandits could take the city from us right now. There’s no army, no Kingsguard, no Goldcloaks. That’s without even starting on governing. No small council, no Hand –”

“Maybe we don’t need those things.”

Brienne groaned. “What?”

“You’re right. I don’t want to rule, I’ve never had any interest in ruling – not for the power or the glory or – or _anything_. That’s not me.”

“Then why in the name of the gods would you decide to declare yourself King?”

“Because I wouldn't do it like that. In the old way. The city is empty – a clean slate. We don’t have to do anything that was done before. I can do it how I want to do it.”

“How?” asked Addam.

“Differently,” said Jaime with a smirk. “I think that’s why this has all happened.”

He bent to tuck back into his soup, eating it hungrily. Addam and Brienne looked at each other – fearful and uncertain. Nira and Alara drank their wine; no one said anything.

Sapphire wriggled to get off Nira’s lap and went to Jaime, holding her arms up to her father. Part of Brienne wanted to stop her, to snatch her away from this strange thing that was Jaime, but … he wasn’t. He was still the man Brienne knew, the man she had seen love his daughter at the hut. He hauled Sapphire onto his lap, and she opened her mouth for his spoon. He grinned and hugged her close even as he fed her a spoonful of the soup.

Once the food was finished, Jaime cleared the table, too and then set to work on making up the beds with the blankets from the carriage. He got a priceless antique war drum from the walls for Sapphire to play with, too, laughing at her banging and shouting at the sound of the thing.

“Take the big bed,” he said to Brienne when finally the babe tired and came to her mother for milk and sleep. “I’ll sleep by the fire with Sapphire, and she can come to you when she needs her milk in the night.”

“Are you certain?” she asked.

Jaime nodded. Gave her a soft smile with soft eyes. “Of course. You’re in pain from riding, you need a proper bed.”

“Th – thank you,” Brienne nodded. She didn’t ask how he knew she was in pain.

Once Sapphire was asleep, they discussed watch periods and set up a watch post outside the room by the big landing window with the best view across the city. Brienne made notches on a candle so that the person on watch knew when to wake the next.

Addam took the first watch, and everyone else bade each other a goodnight and settled down to sleep.

Brienne fell asleep quite easily, considering all that had happened, but she was awakened by a figure standing over her bed.

She opened her eyes, expecting to see Jaime with Sapphire, or Nira coming to wake her for her turn at watch, but it was Addam. She sat up in a panic, going for Oathkeeper – but everyone else was asleep bar Alara, whose bed was empty. Addam must have just sent her out to the window.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m cold,” he said with a pitiful expression.

“You’re not cold.”

“I’m _quite_ cold.”

“You’re sleeping far closer to the fire than I am.”

He grinned. “Then I’m lonely. And – you look quite lonely too in the big soft feather bed of your dreams.”

Brienne grinned too. Pretended to contemplate the size of the bed. “It’s … a big bed.”

Addam’s smile grew wider as she held back the sheets for him. He slipped in beside her and curled his warm, strong arms around her belly. Kissed her breasts through her tunic, one at a time. “And …” he whispered, giving one of her nipples a playful bite. “Think of _all_ those celibate Lord Commanders who have slept here. This bed has probably never been properly used.”

“I think we’d be surprised how often this bed had been _properly used_.”

She tried not to think about the possibility that it had been used by Jaime and Cersei.

“We’d show them all how it’s done,” he grinned, kissing down her belly, hands going for the laces on her breeches.

“Now?!” she gasped.

“Everyone’s asleep, aren’t they?”

“They’re only over there. And – and I have trouble …”

“Trouble?”

She blushed. Blinked furiously. “Alara told me at the farm they would call me ‘Ser Screamer’.”

Addam snorted with laughter. “You are quite loud in the bedchamber, tis true. But … you are when you fight, too. Nothing wrong with that – I find it very arousing.”

He kissed down between her legs, over the top of her breeches. Kissed her thighs and then back up her belly. “Just cuddles, then?”

“Just cuddles. My moon blood is still on me, a little, and I’m sore from riding, too. I doubt it would be too comfortable to take a man tonight.”

“Oh – yes,” Addam shifted his weight from her hips at once, snuggling against her side, instead. “Of course.”

Brienne had to admit that the hard press of his cock to the top of her thigh was quite the temptation, though. He leaned over to give her a long, lingering kiss.

“So are we Jaime’s Kingsguard now?” he whispered between kisses.

“I suppose we are,” Brienne chuckled.

“Well, I’m not taking any oaths of celibacy.”

“Nor I,” she whispered before pulling him down into a long, deep kiss. “Never again.”

“He _did_ say he wanted to do things differently, did he not?”

“That sounds like a good place to start.”

They kissed again, and again, until Addam pulled away. Looking at her with his lips wet from her lips and his hair flopping into his eyes.

“Sapphire is his heir, you know,” he said.

Brienne shook her head. “She’s a bastard.”

“He’s the King. He could legitimise her.”

“He wouldn’t. He knows I –”

“He might wish to wed you.”

Brienne sighed. Pulled away from him. “What? You’re in my bed, kissing me, asking me if I would marry Jaime?”

“No,” he said. He sat up, the sheet tenting ridiculously over his arousal. “Would – would you?”

“Do I look like a woman who wishes to be Queen?”

“Women have taken on far worse roles for the love of a man.”

Brienne sat up, too, adjusting her clothes and her ruffled hair with all the dignity she could muster. “Perhaps it’s time you went back to your own bed, Ser.”

Pain flashed across his face for a moment, but he nodded. Got to his feet and pulled his tunic out to cover the bulge in his breeches.

“Goodnight, Ser Brienne,” he said, and turned his back.


	2. Don't Ask Me To Rule

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "A Hand without a hand? A bad jape, sister. Don't ask me to rule."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Banner by the lovely [@WakingDreams82](https://twitter.com/WakingDreams82) on Twitter.

As they walked through the gates, Jaime learned their stories, felt their loves.

At first, there were only a few people – merchants and traders who had come to sell their wares in King’s Landing, none of whom knew what Bran the Broken had done. Then more arrived, people who came in by ship to the deserted port, people who came on pilgrimages, people who had decided to make a new life in the capital.

The first, on the first day, was a merchant family, the elderly Brack and Marcyn who brought their barrels of salt pork to the capital once a moon. They and their grandson Ellion wandered the deserted streets for some hours, not knowing. Not understanding.

Addam found them, out on the first of his morning patrols. Brought them up to the keep, salt pork and all, to share the breakfast bread Jaime baked in the empty kitchens. A cloud of flour spinning in the morning sunlight spilling through the windows.

Jaime felt them coming into the keep through Traitor’s Gate. Brack had loved Marcyn since she was a raven-haired maid of four-and-ten who sang at village gatherings. Marcyn had grown to love Brack more slowly – she was a cautious, sensible woman who had not wanted to leave her sickly father for just any man. Their love had been sweet and deep and lasting, and it tasted like the warmth of a hot stove. Jaime put their love into his kneading. He folded it into his dough.

Ellion was the son of their daughter – she’d died on the birthing bed, and no one had known who his father was. Ellion was just twenty this moon. Starry-eyed and keen to see more of the world than he could see from the back of his grandparents’ pork-cart. Over breakfast, he took an interest in Addam’s armour and his sword, bragged that he knew how to fight and that he might be good to join their Kingsguard.

Addam laughed, but Brienne threw the boy a tourney sword as Jaime cleared the table after breakfast, Sapphire toddling around his ankles.

“Let’s see how you hold a sword, then,” she said with a nod.

Ellion fumbled it; he dropped it at his feet. But he picked it up in a flash, beet-red, held it sloppily in a two-handed grip. It was plain he had never held a sword in his life – and even plainer when Alara beat him black and blue in the yard outside a moment later.

“You’re young and fit,” Brienne shrugged. “You can be trained if you want to be.”

Ellion nodded eagerly, his eyes on Alara’s flaming hair blowing in the wind as she took off her helm. Jaime smiled from the bench where he watched, bouncing Sapphire on his knee. He felt something, bright and wild, roar through the young man’s mind as he looked at Alara. Hot. Acute. Intense, like youthful passions were.

Jaime held onto that feeling as he went down to the washrooms with Sapphire’s napkins. It was cold and dark in the tower beneath the kitchens; nowhere near so beautiful as his flat rock by the river had been. It was far better equipped, though, with hard lye and scrubbing boards and wringers to ensure the napkins dried faster.

By dinner time, there were a dozen new faces around the table. Jaime had to enlist Nira’s help to cook for them all. He sang Weslar’s song as he kneaded the loaves, as he chopped the vegetables, as he stirred the soup.

Three men had come in from a fishing boat from the Summer Isles, their vessel small enough to get around the ships locked in port when their crews had been killed by Bran the Broken. A young couple had arrived on horseback from Rosby, worried about the wife’s father who lived in the capital who had promised to visit a week past. A wool merchant, his cart piled high with his wares, and two fletchers and their apprentice had appeared a little after midday. As the sun set, two women Jaime knew to be brothel employees walked through the Mud Gate, too. Shocked and horrified to see the empty streets, to see their lodgings deserted and the city dead.

Twelve new people. Five-and-ten in a day. Still, when Jaime thought back on how busy the city gates and docks had always been, it seemed like very few.

There was much he still did not understand about what Bran had done. After he had killed the city, accidental or not, what had happened to new people who arrived? Had they all died too? Frozen as soon as they crossed the barrier where time had stopped?

If that was the case, he, Brienne and Addam should have died on their way into the city. There should also have been a glut of people at this barrier, hundreds and hundreds—a glut of drifting ships manned by frozen corpses. There were neither.

People simply hadn’t come.

When dinner was finished, and beds had been found for the new arrivals, and Sapphire was dozing at Brienne’s breast, Jaime made an excuse and went back to the throne room. Back to the tree.

He had not entered the throne room since he had killed Bran, nor sat on the throne he had claimed.

It felt different this evening. Warmer, somehow. More welcoming. The black tree felt familiar, almost like a friend – a little like Weslar’s laughter, a little like Addam’s arms holding him on Sunchaser’s back while he slept. It felt like Nira’s help in the kitchens, it felt like Alara’s teasing.

Jaime approached the thing tentatively, the clack of his cane on the tiled floor echoing in the empty space around him as he walked.

What was he supposed to do? Talk? Sit among the branches once again? For a moment, he felt foolish, as if he might have imagined the whole thing, though he knew he hadn’t. The mark of the tree burned on his chest, on his back. Down both of his arms – he could feel that even when it wasn’t visible.

In the trunk of the tree, Bran’s face came to life. Opened eyes of fire.

Jaime sat down on the floor in front of it. Pushed his hair out of his eyes. It took him a long moment to speak.

“What’s happening?” he asked when he managed to make his voice work. “People are coming to the city. But not many. Not enough. Not as many as would come in a day when the city was populated.”

“They’re people like you,” Bran said. His voice was the same, even though it came from a tree and not from a throat. He sounded no different at all. “Your tree has brought them here to help you.”

“Help me what? Help me rule? Are they to be my Small Council or something?”

“You’re not here to rule. You already know that.”

Jaime nodded. “And yet … I’m King?”

“You sit the throne. But this isn’t about ruling. What does Jaime Lannister know of economic and agricultural matters? Of diplomacy and the rule of law?”

“Nothing. I’m not the man for that.”

“No. That’s not you. That was your brother’s work. Your father’s work.”

“Then how can I be a good King? I sat the throne because …” He trailed off. He didn’t even know why he had sat the throne. He wasn’t _compelled_ , exactly. Nothing had forced him. It had just felt like … well, like _destiny_.

“Being a good King should not even concern you. Don’t compare yourself to Aerys. Robert. Joffrey, Tommen and Cersei. Don’t compare yourself to me. I was not the man who was meant to sit the Weirwood Throne.”

Jaime scoffed. “But _I_ am?”

“You are.”

Jaime looked up at the twisted branches of the throne. They hung mournfully above him, full of heartbreak, full of Brienne’s pain. Full of the man he had left behind in the Last Hearth.

“You were called here,” Bran continued. “This tree called to you repeatedly.”

Jaime looked back at the face on the tree trunk. “No, it didn’t.”

“You took a vow to guard a madman so you could be here. Pushed a boy from a tower window so you could remain here. Murdered your cousin so you could get back here. Need I continue?”

Jaime scoffed. “That was for –”

“For Cersei?”

The face on the trunk of the tree changed then, narrowing and shortening to make an immaculately-sculpted set of features. High cheekbones. Full lips.

“Does it help you to believe that, brother?” the tree said. Cersei’s voice – it made Jaime shudder to hear her. “You know it makes no sense. To leave a woman you loved for a woman who tried to have you killed? A woman who lied about being with child? Even _you_ are not so stupid as that. It wasn’t me you were loyal to, all those times you crawled here like a dog on your belly. It was this tree.”

As he watched, the face twisted back to Bran the Broken’s visage, tranquil and smooth.

“Are – are you truly Bran?” Jaime asked.

“No,” said the tree. “You killed Bran, remember?”

“So, who are you?”

“Lots of people. I’m all the people who have led you to this point. But most of all, I’m _you_.”

The face changed again, forming his own features – the way he’d looked before the bricks. He looked chiselled and handsome, even as the bark of a tree.

“Don’t do that,” Jaime said.

“I’ll be Bran, then,” the tree said in his own voice. “If that’s easier.”

“I can make no sense of this,” Jaime said. “You – _Bran_ – told me I was meant to be in the Last Hearth with Brienne? Now you’re telling me I was supposed to be here all along? With this tree?”

“Bran saw everything, so it made him think he knew everything, too. He knew nothing of this tree, though. Your connection to it.”

Jaime shook his head. “So the tree called me here, repeatedly, throughout my life? So I might be King, but not so I might rule?”

“Yes,” said Bran.

“Why?”

“The things you’ll do for love.”

“What? What will I do?”

Bran’s face smiled, and then suddenly it was Brienne’s smile, wide and horsey and crooked and _her._

The mark on Jaime’s skin came to life, rippling and glowing on his body as he watched. It surged through him, all the love he had felt from the new arrivals to the city. Brack and Marcyn, dancing together somewhere in the moonlight, Ellion’s eyes on Alara’s hair. The four fishermen, two of whom made love below decks whenever they were alone. The couple from Rosby who had first held hands while walking along a riverbank choked with dead from the War of the Five Kings. The wool merchant, who had only loved one woman from afar.

The tree grew, swelling with the joy of it all, its branches reaching through the open roof with twigs like fingers.

Jaime closed his eyes.

Yes. Yes.

 _The things he’d do for love_ ….

He felt them, felt their power – they had been with him all his life. The certainty he’d been filled with, the single-mindedness. He’d had to stay. _Stay_. He’d always had to stay in King’s Landing. Stay near the tree.

He opened his eyes, and he was sat on his throne, naked again. Its branches were wrapped about his body, following the lines of the mark on his skin exactly. Forks where there were forks, twigs where there were twigs. A branch swathed about his forehead like a crown, knotted into his hair, following the contour of his scar.

Jaime. Jaime.

First of his name.

The tree released him, and he slid to the floor, to his knees, shuddering and gasping. He was covered in sweat, and his body sang as the mark faded – he felt as though he’d just had particularly intense sex.

His clothes were folded on the floor in front of the tree, his cane beside them. He had folded them himself, he could tell – the creases were sloppy and imprecise, the best he could do with one hand. He had no recollection of getting undressed.

“What was _that_?” he asked. His voice echoed in the dark throne room.

Bran’s face was silent. Closed eyes. Nothing more than a carving. Jaime wondered if it had been a vision or a dream.

He dressed and limped out of the throne room.

The keep was alive with love. He felt it as he made his way across the darkened yard and through the huge, looming portcullis that led to the Middle Bailey. Above him, the sky was clear and sprayed with stars, and everyone was in love.

Had he done this? Had the tree?

Brack and Marcyn were making love in the room they’d been given in the Tower of the Hand. Jaime felt them the way you heard a soft melody of music in the summer air. Ellion and Alara were fucking in the stables, too; a wild dance of carnality that felt jagged and crude in his head. Ellion was overwhelmed, losing himself rapidly. Alara was this ferocious thing that danced above him, fluid and free.

Past the pig yard, past the armoury, down the Serpentine Steps and into the Lower Bailey. The sailors from the Summer Isles had crept into each other’s beds as well – they were a blur of mouths and hands and muffled cries in the Goldcloaks’ barracks. The wool merchant, sleeping in the Rookery pictured his lady love, his cock a thing of yearning ecstasy in his hand.

Beside Jaime, the great, majestic shape of Maegor’s Holdfast towered into the night sky. The drawbridge across the dry moat was down, but as yet, he had not been inside.

Now he could feel the young couple from Rosby, spooned against each other, sleeping. The two fletchers had shared some ale with the two brothel-workers – now the two women were sitting on their knees.

Jaime opened the door of the White Sword Tower and crept inside. He stopped.

Brienne was kissing Addam.

Jaime felt the two of them stronger and sweeter than all the others put together. Perhaps because he knew them better, perhaps because he loved Brienne.

They were at the top of the stairs, the window on the landing. Brienne was taking first watch tonight; Addam had brought her a blanket. A pretext, of course, but now they were sharing it, wrapped around each other against a wall. Jaime allowed himself to get lost in the feeling of it, of _them_. He could feel them both quite intensely, almost as if he were up there with them, kissing them both.

Addam’s beard prickled slightly, and his mouth tasted of wine and salt pork and spices. Brienne’s hands were on his face, her fingers tightening and loosening and clutching him and then stroking through his hair. Her mouth was warm and sweet and big and clumsy, and Addam tipped his head back so she could lean over him, the breath from her nose warm on his cheek.

Jaime caught himself. Pulled his mind away from them. He was sweating. Panting, his cock achingly hard in his breeches.

What the fuck was he doing? He was no better than a peeping Tom, lurking in the shadows becoming aroused at their intimate moment. He forced himself back out of the door and into the snow. Forced himself to walk the length of the bailey and back again until his excitement had abated.

These strange abilities … they were fascinating. Intoxicating. But – they were dishonourable. What went on in a bedchamber was private and personal and Jaime had never before been the sort to spy on the nocturnal activities of others. The thought disturbed him. If he was to use these feelings, draw power from them as the face in the tree had suggested, he would need to learn to do it with respect.

He went to the kitchens. Boiled some water to make some tea. Put it in a clay bottle to keep warm and brought it back to the White Sword Tower.

Addam and Brienne were no longer kissing by the time he got back – Sapphire had woken and was cuddled on her mother’s lap falling back to sleep at her breast. Addam stood at the window in Brienne’s stead.

They both looked up as Jaime climbed the stairs – his back to the wall to keep himself steady while he carried the jug and his cane and the cups.

“I made tea,” he said. Not quite able to look either of them in the eye.

Addam’s hair was messy, and Brienne was decidedly pink, but she shifted up on the trunk she sat on to make room for Jaime. He sat down beside her, close enough that their thighs all but touched. Close enough to feel the heat from her body.

He had to stop this – all he could think about was how she had felt pressed against him, pressing him to the wall and running her fingers through his hair. But it wasn’t him she had been pressed against – it was Addam.

Sapphire opened her eyes to give her father a sleepy smile before closing them again to concentrate on her suckling.

Addam poured the cups and passed them out, the steam swirling in the air between them.

“I put everyone in rooms around the keep for now,” Addam said. “But … I’m guessing you don’t want them to stay there.”

Jaime looked to Brienne before realising that Addam was speaking to him. He blinked. “Why should I care where they sleep?”

“Are you not the King? The keep is for royalty. I thought it would be easier to defend, this way. Should it come to that.”

“It won’t come to that,” Jaime said into his tea.

“How do you know?” asked Brienne softly.

“I’m not sure,” said Jaime. “But I think the people who are coming are coming for a reason.”

“What reason?”

Jaime shrugged. “For me.”

Addam and Brienne exchanged a look.

“Well, we shall see. But … house them wherever there’s room. It matters little to me.”

Addam nodded. “Yes … Your Grace.”

Jaime laughed. “ _’Your Grace’_?”

“Are you the King or aren’t you?”

“I don’t want to be ‘Your Grace’. That’s for men who desire sycophants and fawners.”

“I think you may be in the wrong job, then.”

“Perhaps so, but I’m stuck with it now. So … no ‘Your Grace’, if it please you.”

“What, then? ‘My Lord’? ‘Ser’?”

Jaime frowned. Neither of those fitted him well any more either. A Lord without a seat and a Knight who couldn’t much fight. He had no desire to be either. “My name’s Jaime.”

“You just want me to call you Jaime?”

“Yes. Why not? It is who I am, after all.”

“Ellison wishes to stay,” Brienne said. “The boy, the pork merchants’ grandson. He asked if we might train him.”

It seemed like Alara had made a head start on that, Jaime thought with a grin. He nodded. “Of course.”

“His grandparents seemed keen to settle in the city, too,” Brienne continued. “Their farm has been burned and raided a dozen times in the past five years – I think they’ve had enough.”

Jaime nodded again. “There’s a lot of room. For anyone who wants it. Like I said … these people are here for a reason. One I’m not sure I understand yet, but …”

“What _do_ you understand?” Brienne asked. “I mean we’re here, we’re helping you, following you. Defending you if need be. But I’d like to know what it is that’s happening here.”

Sapphire slipped sleepily off her breast, rolling over and replacing her mother’s teat with her thumb. She looked the picture of perfect innocence. Jaime smiled.

“I’m not sure I can tell you. Not in any way that will satisfy you.”

“Try,” Brienne insisted. “Start with your – with what you can do now. What is that? Is it akin to what Bran could do?”

“I’m not dangerous, if that’s what you’re worried about?”

“That _is_ what I’m worried about. Of course it is. You say people are coming to the city for _you_? Why? What is that tree, and what is that mark on your skin? Where did you get it?”

“I got it … when I was riding,” he said. Looking at his boots as he remembered how wonderful it had been to fly through the forest on the broad back of The Wench. “I was knocked off my horse by the branch of a tree.”

“When?” asked Addam. “Here, in the city?”

Jaime shook his head. “Bran showed me something,” he said. He hadn’t known whether to tell the others, but he didn’t want to lie, either. “A vision, perhaps, of a world where I was never the Black Hole.”

“This is what happened to you?” Addam asked. “When he took you? He showed you a vision?”

Jaime nodded. “Of a different world. One where I did not end up under the bricks with Cersei. One where I had made … a different choice.” He looked at Brienne.

“A choice … to stay in Winterfell.” Brienne returned his look with her blue eyes big and round. “With me.”

“Yes.”

Neither Brienne nor Addam moved a muscle. Neither of them said a word.

“We were together, still,” Jaime told her. “Married. We’d raised Sapphire together, only – only we’d named her after my mother – she was Joanna. Your father still hadn’t let you set foot on Tarth, so Sansa Stark gave us The Last Hearth. Well … _you_. It was your seat, I was your consort. We – ”

Jaime stopped. Brienne’s face … her _face_. She looked the way she had when Tyrion had turned their drinking game sour by talking of her maidenhead. Half horrified and half nauseous.

She stood up. Towered over Jaime. “I have to put Sapphire back to bed.”

She pushed past him and went into the Lord Commander’s chamber without looking back. Addam looked like he wanted to punch someone. Waves of pain came off him so palpable that Jaime almost physically recoiled.

Addam turned away. Looked out of the window, his jaw tight and his fists clenched.

“I’ve upset her,” said Jaime.

Addam scoffed.

“I should – I should talk to her.”

“Why don’t you just fuck her?”

“Wh-what?”

“I think you heard me. Why don’t you just get it over with, get it out of both your systems and fuck?” Addam turned back, his eyes afire with rage and something impotent, too.

“I – I mean, she …”

“I’ve tried to pretend it isn’t so, I’ve tried being understanding and supportive and giving you space. You have a complicated history; you’re the father of her babe. But Tyrion was right, wasn’t he? In his letter, all those moons ago. Given enough time, she’ll lose her heart to you again – I’m just a distraction.”

Jaime gaped.

“I see it every time she looks at you. She hates herself for it, but she fucking loves you, and she can’t stop. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“Addam –”

“Tell me. You’re the one with the tree powers of love, Jaime. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Jaime sighed. Put his head in his hand. “I’m not doing that. I won’t poke in her thoughts, she wouldn’t want that.”

“Oh how convenient.”

“You should talk to Brienne – the matter is between you.”

Addam shook his head. “No.”

“Then what are you raving about? If you won’t even ask her –”

“Perhaps I will mislike her answer. Perhaps I’m too craven to hear it.”

“Hear this, then. We were alone in that hut for near six moons. Sharing a bed, pretending to be husband and wife. We had no plans to go back to our old lives – for all we knew we’d be there forever. And we believed you to have died at the farm. If Tyrion was so right, why did we not bed each other then?”

“Because she had a broken pelvis, and you were an arse over Cersei. But look at you now – a good father, a good man. Cooking and washing and bringing her tea.”

“You think I do those things to get her to lie with me?”

“Yes! No … I don’t fucking know!”

“I don’t.”

Addam sighed. Shook his head and looked out of the window, across the black shadows of the city. “This was so much easier when you were a prick.”

Jaime laughed. Addam did not. He was a lot more wound up than he had been before. When they had spoken of marriage on that walk in the woods.

“I’m not going to take her from you,” Jaime said softly. “Does that make you feel better? I … I don’t even know what we are to each other any more.”

“But you love her?”

“It doesn’t _matter_.”

“Yes, it does. Of course it does. I don’t want to be her second choice.”

“And she doesn’t want to be mine. Even if she were struck by the moon itself over me, I left her for Cersei. That innocence she had about me is gone. She’s not the type to forget that.”

Addam nodded. “Tis true,” he said.

“I can’t make her new for you, Addam. I can’t take away what happened between her and me or any of the residual feelings, the good or the bad. But … for the gods’ sakes, take this with both hands – take _her_. Don’t be the fool I was.”

Just then, the door behind them opened. Brienne came out, without Sapphire. Her tunic untied. No boots on her feet. Her eyes red.

Jaime and Addam stared at her.

She stared at Jaime. “I want you to go,” she said.

“What?”

“I’ve been thinking. We have a whole castle. A whole city. There’s no need for you to sleep on the floor in here.”

“Brienne –”

“No, Jaime. It – it’s not appropriate any more.”

“But – but what of Sapphire?”

“What of her? I’m her mother – if she wakes, I will tend her. You’re the King, you should be sleeping in the King’s chambers.”

“Brienne! _Please_ …”

She shook her head. Picked up a candelabra and held it out for him. “Go, Jaime. I mean it. I’ll send Nira to help you light a fire and do anything else you need help with.”

Jaime sighed. Nodded. “If that’s what you want.”

“It is.”

“Then I will see you both on the morrow. Good night.”

“Good night,” said Brienne.

Addam looked too stunned to speak.

Jaime trudged back down the stairs of the White Sword Tower, trying not to trip on his cane, trying not to set his hair on fire with the candelabra, trying not to sob so loud someone could hear him.

He left the tower and made his way through the snow to the drawbridge across the dry moat into Maegor’s.

Jaime had known this would happen sooner or later, of course he had. They weren’t married, they weren’t together; Sapphire was his bastard daughter, nothing more. Brienne was right.

But he’d done something. Something terrible. Something she’d hate.

When she’d come through the door, her eyes red and wide and her lip trembling as she’d looked at him, he’d looked at _her_ , too. Looked _inside._ Looked at her private thoughts, her private feelings, the ones she kept hidden away deep inside.

He’d looked, and he’d _seen._

Addam had been right. Brienne _was_ in love with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has carried on with this story and thanks so much for all the lovely comments and kudos and messages on Tumblr and Twitter too. I really do love to hear from you all and it's been great to chat about everything that's happened.
> 
> Happy birthday to very lovely reader TooOld4This. Sorry I am a little late to get this chapter out on the day itself, but hopefully not too late for you to enjoy it on your birthday weekend!
> 
> A special shout-out to my bestie and sister-from-another-mister CaptainTarthister. She keeps me on the straight and narrow with this story, listening to my wild ravings and talking me down from all sorts of crazy things. Thank you for being my number one, dear!
> 
> Stay tuned for chapter 3, coming very soon, when we will be back to Brienne's POV. If you'd like to get some teasers and updates about it as things progress, then please do consider following me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/).


	3. The Iron Cage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It was as if she had an iron cage around her that stopped every blow."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Banner by the lovely [@WakingDreams82](https://twitter.com/WakingDreams82) on Twitter.

Brienne took Addam to bed.

Or at least, she had intended to. She kissed him as soon as Jaime left the tower, as soon as she heard the door swing shut at the bottom of the stairs. Kissed him for all she was worth, kissed him like she needed his mouth on hers to breathe.

She backed him into the Lord Commander’s chambers, forgetting all about staying on watch, forgetting all about the burning candle, her cup of tea. Forgetting all about Nira, tucked up in her bed on the floor.

“Ser?” the handmaid asked sleepily, lifting her head from her pillow and looking up at Brienne and Addam.

“Nira …” Brienne panted. Her hands frozen on Addam’s arse and his pulling her tunic from her breeches. “Oh, uh … Ser Jaime needs your help. In – in the King’s – in Maegor’s Holdfast. The King’s Chambers. He – he’s staying there from now on, he needs some help to light his fire?”

“Of course, Ser.” She got to her feet, a smile on her face. “Why don’t I stay over there tonight, too? In case he needs more help. If you don’t think you’ll need me, Ser?”

“No – no, I … that sounds like a good idea, Nira.”

Brienne and Addam watched her as she collected a few belongings, donned her jerkin and left the room.

Nira closed the door, and Brienne jumped on Addam.

He cried out in surprise – she all but knocked him over. He crashed into the table and had to take his hands off her to steady himself.

“You want this?” he panted, looking up at her with wide, yearning eyes. “Truly?”

“Truly,” she huffed, a little irritated that she was being questioned like some maid who didn’t know her own mind.

Thankfully, he believed her. His mouth was all over her neck, his hands sliding up her ribs, sliding warm, exciting trails that were half a tickle and half a burn. Her hands were in his hair, then down his back, then back on his arse – his arse felt _good_ , shapely and firm from all the riding.

He stepped back to pull her tunic over her head and then both hands and the warm, wet thrill of his mouth were on her breasts, suckling for her milk and groping her without shame.

She pulled him towards the bed.

Sapphire – she’d forgotten about Sapphire. She’d put the babe to sleep in her own bed, right in the middle, surrounded by pillows. She dragged Addam back again, headed for the table.

The Lord Commander’s table.

Oh gods, this was wrong. It was so wrong – the table where all those distinguished Lord Commanders had sat, where all those pages of the White Book were solemnly written.

None of that was real, she told herself as she kicked off her breeches and lifted her bare arse onto that sacred surface. Most likely, all those great knights were liars, murderers, oathbreakers. The whole institution had been rotten to the core.

Addam dropped to his knees between her legs. Used his fingers to splay her. The sudden wet shock of his tongue tore a gasp from Brienne’s throat. She fell back to her elbows and tipped her head back – dizzy and hot in the heat of the fire.

Addam was making soft noises of happiness – Brienne was making bigger ones. Oh gods … _gods_ … she had forgotten how good this felt, how good it felt to be loved, how good _sex_ felt. The sensation wrapped around her and held her tight. Held her down against the hard wood of the tabletop.

She was having this, this was hers.

His beard felt so good on the sensitive skin of her thighs, made her toes curl, made her fingers grasp for purchase, one hand on the table, the other in his hair. Her belly was tight, her throat was tight, her eyes screwed shut.

“I’m – I’m –”

She’d left it too late to tell him. She came with a strangled cry, intense as a bolt of lightning, crackling through her body in forks and branches.

Addam lifted his head with a triumphant grin on his face. Brienne sat up to free his cock from his breeches. To run her hands through the hair on his chest and shoulders.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered as he kissed her neck. “Your pelvis. How can I do this so that I won’t hurt you?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Not too much weight on me?”

Addam nodded. “Turn around.”

“Turn around?”

He nodded again. “Bend over the table.”

“How –”

“You’ve seen dogs fucking, yes? Horses? Like that.”

Like that. Brienne had never done it like that. The thought excited her – there _was_ something animalistic about it.

She stood up. Looked Addam in the eyes as she slid off the tabletop. He gazed up at her with a look that _burned_. Naked lust. Naked desire. She kissed him, hot and slow and lazy. He groaned into her mouth, his tongue tasting of her cunt.

She turned around and put her palms on the table. Looked over her shoulder as she slid down, slid forward. Arms sliding ahead of her, stretching in front of her until her belly and breasts pressed against the tabletop.

Behind her, Addam glowed in the firelight. The flush of his skin, the flame of his hair, barely seen from the corner of her eye. His hands slid onto her hips. Squeezed the cheeks of her arse.

He pushed inside her with a shuddering groan and _oh_ it felt completely different from this angle. Blunter. Tighter. Harder. She slipped a hand between her legs, keeping the other stretched out before her on the table.

His thrusts began gently, little more than a light, shallow flex of his thighs to test if he hurt her. He didn’t hurt her. His pace quickened, his breath grew laboured, he panted her name. Brienne propped her chin on the table and grasped at his arse, urging him. Faster. Harder.

His hands tightened on her hips, going at her so hard their bodies made a clapping sound with every thrust. Brienne heard herself cursing. Felt her nipples chafe against the table. Felt that feeling build and build and build and _build_ …

Gods, she was going to come again!

A wild cry tore from her throat, and she bumped her face on the tabletop, biting her own tongue. Then, suddenly, in a rush, he pulled out of her. Hunched over the tabletop, his seed squirting in several big gluts across the carved emblem of the Kingsguard.

Brienne laughed.

Addam looked at her, his face red and his chest heaving. He laughed, too.

She stood up, took him in her arms to kiss him, wrapping her arms about his neck and tipping his mouth up to meet hers.

“I missed you, Brienne,” he whispered. “I missed lying with you.”

She smiled softly down at him. “I missed you, too.”

They cleaned up and went to bed, holding hands across the pillows, either side of Sapphire. Smiling at each other, their feet entangled beneath the furs at the ankles.

He let go of her fingers to stroke her hair. Looking at her as though she was the most precious thing in all of Westeros. He opened his mouth and took a breath as if to speak. Closed his mouth and smiled, instead.

“What?” she asked.

He winced and cringed a little. “Would it frighten you if I told you I’ve fallen in love with you?”

She let out a little laugh, little more than a breath.

“I know you don’t – I mean – I know you … and Jaime ...”

“What does Jaime have to do with anything?”

He gave her a look. “I don’t … _mind_.”

“You don’t mind?”

“I _understand_. If it weren’t for Cersei –”

“What?”

“If it weren’t for Cersei, he would have wed you. You are in a strange situation, the two of you.”

Brienne didn’t reply. Addam … he wasn’t wrong. What were she and Jaime? They were less than lovers, far less. But in a way, they were more than wed. They had shared more than most highborn married couples ever would. She sighed. Rolled onto her back in the bed. She stared at the ceiling for a long, long moment. 

“I could fall in love with you,” she said eventually. Turned back to look at him, at his warm, handsome face on the pillow beside Sapphire. “You must know that. I _am_ falling in love with you.”

His face broke out into a smile that made Brienne’s heart skip a beat. The kind of smile that made her want to spend the rest of her life making him happy enough to smile it.

“But where does that lead? It’s as we said on our journey to the capital; you’re the heir to your house – you will need a lady wife.”

He played with a strand of her hair, stroking it between his thumb and forefinger. “You are a lady, are you not, Brienne of Tarth?”

Brienne shook her head. “I am the Kingslayer’s whore.”

Addam purpled. “You are _not_ his whore. Nor any man’s.”

She took his hand. Kissed his fingers. “I know. But … I am to my father. I would be to yours, as well.”

“My father doesn’t pick my bride,” Addam boasted.

Brienne gave him a sceptical look.

“Fuck him! I would wed you anyway. Find a Septon, do the deed. Return to Ashemark. I know my father, he would be displeased, but –”

She shook her head. “What of Sapphire? A bastard in a noble house is considered ill luck at best. A Lannister bastard …”

“I would _never_ let anyone treat her as less. Surely you know this.”

“I do. Of course I do. But …”

“We would make her brothers and sisters. She need never know she is different from them.”

“And if I didn’t wish to have more children?”

Addam swallowed. “Do – do you not?”

“I am forty years old. And … call me craven if you wish, but … I fear the birthing bed again, I truly do. More so, now that I broke my pelvis.”

“You’re strong, you –”

“And I wish to stay that way. I am a Knight – that is all that was left to me. All I have of myself.”

“Oh. I – yes. Of course. I understand.”

Brienne looked away. She was stung with guilt – her babe with Jaime lay between them and here she was refusing Addam a babe of his own. But she would not lie to him.

“So what are we to be, then?” Addam asked after a moment. He was smiling, but his face was strained. “Lovers? An amusement to each other?”

“Must we define it? We … we’re in an unusual situation here. Kingsguard to a king of an all but empty city. Not knowing the purpose of Jaime’s …”

“Oh. Jaime.”

“What?”

“Always Jaime.”

Brienne sighed. “It is, isn’t it.” She looked to Sapphire, sucking her thumb in her sleep. Her pretty golden curls mussed against the pillow.

“Will it always be that way?”

“I don’t know. He …”

“You love him still.”

“It’s not about that! It’s about Sapphire. _She_ loves him. She’s his daughter and … things have changed.”

“I can see that.”

“I would not take her from him. Nor him from her.”

“So … Jaime without Jaime, then? Always? Always near the man you love but never having him? That doesn’t sound like much of a way to live.”

“It’s not about who I love. Like I said.”

“He loves you too, you know.”

Brienne sighed. “I know.”

They were silent then. Still touching each other but not looking at each other.

“Why have you not lain with him?” He caught her look and held up his hands. “Curiosity, not jealousy.”

It took her a long, long time to answer. “When I lay with Jaime before, I loved him deeply. I don’t want to love him that way again.”

“Why?”

“Lots of reasons. Cersei. Sapphire. His vicious moods – his vicious tongue. The fact he threw a glass at my face when he found me with you. Loving a man like that is more difficult than he deserves.”

Addam fell silent.

“I know that’s no answer. I know that’s complicated,” Brienne said.

“It’s an answer,” Addam said, his voice gentle. “It makes sense.”

“My life is my own. I have no father or husband to please, nor provide an heir for. No vows to uphold. Sapphire… _Jaime_ caused me difficulties, but he’s also freed me. If he’d married me ...”

“You’d be the Lady of the Rock. Or Tarth. Or … the Last Hearth.”

“Bound by duty. Bound to Jaime, bound to produce heirs.”

“You would not have been happy, even with him?”

“It’s all a lie, isn’t it? Duty. Servitude. Vows of love. Give someone your fealty, and they can hurt you more than you can possibly imagine. I don’t want that anymore.”

Addam sighed. “That’s … a depressing thought.”

“I’m sorry. I’m exhausted, I think. It feels as though I have had little respite since I left Tarth to join Lord Renly.”

“It has been war after war, hasn’t it? Struggle after struggle.” Addam looked sad, too. “So much turmoil – and for what?”

“Perhaps … to put Jaime on the throne?” said Brienne.

A silence followed. Addam and Brienne both looked at each other and simultaneously burst into laughter. All but loud enough to wake Sapphire. The babe squirmed between them, fussed a little in her sleep.

“Shhh!” Brienne urged between giggles, smoothing her daughter’s soft hair until she settled again.

Addam turned away, a hand over his mouth.

“Stop it!” she urged him. “It’s not funny.”

“It _is_ , though. The man to end all this … a decade of war, kingdoms torn asunder, families decimated … is _Jaime Lannister_?”

“I know.”

“Do you think he has a hope in all the hells? Do you think he has one single clue how to rule a kingdom?”

“He says he’ll do things differently,” Brienne said with a shrug.

“I’d feel better if I knew what ‘differently’ looked like. At the moment, it feels as though any Lord with a house guard could wipe us out and take the city in a day.”

Brienne nodded, grim. Defending this city … even defending the keep was quite beyond them at the moment. She could train people, they both could. But …

“And … Jaime killed Bran Stark,” Addam continued. “How do you think Bran’s sister will react when news reaches Winterfell?”

“Not well,” Brienne had to admit.

“Not well,” Addam concurred. “You served her – do you believe she would she raise an army against us?”

“I don’t know. Sansa suffered a lot during the wars – I’m not sure she would be eager to start another. She knows little of battles, too. Without her brother, I’m uncertain she could lead an army.”

“She could find allies easily enough, I daresay. The Vale … Riverrun … perhaps even the Stormlands, with Gendry Baratheon in charge. Putting a Lannister on the throne will stir up some considerable ire.”

The Stormlands. Brienne swallowed. Would her father …? Against Jaime?

“We need to talk about this, don’t we?” Brienne said. “With Jaime.”

Addam nodded. “Perhaps we can talk him out of this King nonsense. Talk him into going back to the Rock or something.”

“Tomorrow. Once we have broken our fast, all right? I will speak with him. Make him understand our predicament.”

Addam got up on one elbow. Leaned over Sapphire to place a kiss on Brienne’s lips.

They held hands across the pillows as they fell asleep, not waking until the sun was well in the sky.

Brienne woke to the sound of bells. Bells? Who was ringing the bells? She dragged herself out of bed, quite forgetting she was naked, quite forgetting that Addam was there, just the other side of Sapphire.

“What is that?” Addam asked, cracking one eye. He sat up, his hair sticking up and drool in his beard. His well-muscled, well-furred body looked good, though.

“Bells,” said Brienne, stepping into a fresh pair of breeches from the previous Lord Commander’s drawers.

“Why the fuck are the bells ringing?”

“I don’t know.” Brienne pulled a tunic over her head. Laced it as she left the room. She went to the window, where the candle from watch still sat, where the three cups of tea still sat. She looked out over the city and gasped.

There were people. Hundreds of them. They swarmed the keep, standing in groups, standing alone, standing in pairs holding hands. They were in the outer yard, in the middle bailey. In the lower bailey too.

A line, ten people thick, went into the throne room.

“Gods!” said Brienne.

“What?” Addam was behind her, on the landing naked, Sapphire in his arms. She reached for Brienne.

Brienne took her babe and sat her on her hip, lifting her tunic to give her daughter her breast while she gaped out of the window.

“Where did they all come from?” Addam asked. Leaning into the windowsill.

“I have no idea.”

“What the fuck is going on?”

“I need to find Jaime.”

Brienne went downstairs, barefoot and uncloaked, Sapphire still feeding. Outside, the weather was warm. Warm! Spring sunshine – the ground wet with melted snow, squelching underfoot.

It was busy everywhere. People carried furniture about – long tables and piles of chairs were headed over the drawbridge and into the keep. Carried by people Brienne had never seen before.

She headed for the throne room; the crowd parted around her as she went. Warm smiles and pleasant greetings as she went up the Serpentine Steps. Several doffed hats as she made her way through the middle bailey.

Already she could smell food cooking in the kitchens. Bread and meat and spiced soup.

Brienne caught sight of Nira and Alara as she crossed the outer yard – both were in their armour, swords at their hips.

“Ser!” called Nira as she got close. Sapphire pulled off from feeding to smile at Nira.

“What’s happening?” Brienne asked. “Who – where did all these people come from?”

“Not sure,” said Alara. “They were all here when we woke up.”

“Did you open the gates? Did you let them in?”

“Not us, no, Ser.”

“Who was it? Was it Jaime?”

Alara shrugged, but Nira nodded. “I think so, Ser.”

“Where is he?”

“In – in there, Ser. In the throne room.”

“Has there been any trouble?”

“No, not at all. Everyone has waited their turn to go in. They’ve been patient and happy, they’ve shared food out that they brought with them and been really … nice.”

“Good. Keep an eye on things. I’ll – I’ll go and see Jaime.”

“Of course, Ser.”

Brienne moved forward, through the thick line of people queuing to get into the throne room. There were so many of them! She wished she had donned her armour and worn Oathkeeper. She wished she’d even remembered to put boots on.

But nothing was threatening about this crowd, not even the usual unease she felt when in a situation she was unsure of. Everyone moved out of her way. As soon as they saw or heard her coming or felt her presence at their shoulder, they stepped aside for her with a smile and a greeting. Sapphire watched them all, her eyes huge and bright. Waving at people who waved at her.

Inside the throne room, the smell of flowers hit Brienne almost at once. A fresh scent – one she had not smelled for several years, not since the summer years turned to autumn ones and then froze into winter.

“Oh!” Brienne was unable to stop herself from exclaiming aloud.

The tree … it was _beautiful_. Alive.

It had been a severe thing before, a stark black shape stamped on the austere surroundings of the empty throne room. Frightening, almost. Mysterious.

Now, its branches gleamed. Caught the sunlight spinning through the open roof. They waved in the breeze like a dancing child’s fingertips. And … it had flowered.

Bright blue blossom, as bright as Sapphire’s eyes, had sprouted from every branch. Every twig. As the tree swayed in the breeze, the petals fell like snowflakes. Fluttering through the air, dancing in the sunlight.

In the tree, wrapped in the blossom and the branches, as naked as his nameday, was Jaime.

Jaime …

Gods, he looked beautiful, too.

He wore a crown of bright blue flowers in his golden hair, every curl portrait-perfect, kissed by sunlight. The tree’s branches encircled his wrists and ankles like delicate jewellery. A branch of blossom crossed his chest; it wound its way down to cover his manhood in a burst of blooms. He smiled beatifically, and his skin glowed the way it did after he had just made love.

Brienne was frozen. Awestruck. Overcome.

Jaime. _Jaime_ …

“What the _fuck_?” asked Addam. He was behind her shoulder, somehow. Holding her boots in one hand. Her jacket in the other.

Brienne could only whimper. Her cheeks burned, and her womanhood throbbed with wet want.

“Jaime …”

She went toward him. Captivated. Longing. They were singing, she realised as she neared the front. All the people who surrounded the tree – a soft, ululating throb of tongues and throats that rose like hot steam through the air.

Jaime. Jaime’s body …

He was so much thinner than he had been when she had lain with him at Winterfell – he’d lost all his fighter’s muscle. But the lean slant of his torso, the curve of his hip bones … she wanted to kneel in front of him, lick into that v of muscle that disappeared into his groin. Take his cock in her mouth, squeeze it between her breasts, watch his narrow hips arch and thrust into her touch.

Jaime turned his head to her and smiled. A Jaime smile, one of those that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made him look like he was laughing. One of those that melted Brienne into an ugly, pathetic puddle of jelly.

He mouthed something to her. She didn’t understand – shook her head.

He mouthed it again – “What’s amiss?”

She looked about her, incredulous. Where to begin? “I need you – I need to talk to you.”

Jaime nodded. He stepped down from the tree, the branches uncurling from his limbs at his command. The blossom leaving his hair full of petals.

Without Jaime saying a word, the queue to see him, to get into the throne room, seemed to disperse. People broke into groups, stood around chatting, laughing, sharing stories and food. Everyone seemed to touch each other a lot.

“What in all the hells is going on, Jaime?” Addam asked. Brienne was grateful; she was having trouble forming words at the moment.

“I’m not really certain,” Jaime said. He drank from a cup of water that was handed to him by Marcyn. Brack passed him his clothes. His cane. “These people arrived early this morning.”

“Did you – did you open the gates?”

He nodded. Marcyn held his hand and helped him step into his breeches. Tied them for him. Refilled his cup.

“Why?” asked Brienne.

“We let the others in. Yesterday, did we not?”

“Yesterday there were fifteen of them.”

Jaime shrugged. “These people are no different.”

“How do you know that?”

“You _know_ how.”

“Because you can see their thoughts?”

“Yes. They came here for me. For the tree. If I’m the King, they’re my subjects.”

Addam let out a sigh. So did Brienne. “Jaime,” she said. “What is going on here? Are you … calling to these people somehow?”

Jaime nodded. “I think I am. Attracting them. I’m not doing it consciously, but –”

“For what purpose?” Addam asked.

“To populate the city? To feed us, defend us? Why does any King need people in his city?”

“This … this is not what a King does, Jaime,” said Brienne.

“I told you. I’m doing it differently.”

“How?”

“I’m doing it with _love_.”

“What does that even mean?” asked Addam. “You’ve used some – some _magic_ to lure people to you? And now you love them? Or they you?”

Brienne flushed. She … she had felt it. Could feel it still. A heat that radiated from Jaime that _spoke_ to her. Left her weak in the knees and wet between the legs. It was the feeling she’d always had for him, that same desire, that admiration and belief. Only … it had been sorted. Put at the front of her head, ahead of her reservations about him, her honour and propriety and self-preservation.

“You don’t trust me?” Jaime asked.

“I don’t trust _magic_ ,” Addam replied. “Strange magic that has you dancing naked in a tree least of all.”

“I’m not _dancing_.”

“What are you doing, then? Does that tree possess you somehow? Are you even Jaime any more?”

“What? How can you say that?”

“Because I’ve never seen you naked in a tree before?”

“No … Jaime Lannister is a bad man. He fucks his sister and leaves women in the middle of the night. He pushes boys from towers and murders his cousins – a kinslayer and a Kingslayer both. Why is it easier for you to accept me that way, but not this?”

“Because it’s different. And strange. And worrying … that you have some hold over hundreds of people. Enough to make them leave their homes and come to you, enough that they are all singing for you around a tree.”

Jaime looked down, his hair flopping into his eyes. “It doesn’t feel that way to me.”

“How does it feel?” Brienne asked.

“Like destiny. Like I’m finally becoming the man I was meant to be.”

“A tree man?” Addam said.

Jaime made a face. He turned to Brienne. “Does this look dangerous to you? Like anything you can’t handle? These people are smallfolk. Merchants, traders, farmers, farmhands. Ordinary people. Do they look like they’re a threat to us?”

Brienne was forced to shake her head. “Not at this moment, no.”

“Have I done anything dangerous? Anything that’s frightened you or made you think I’ve been possessed by a tree?”

“Well … no. Despite the – the mind-reading … I think you’re still Jaime.”

“Brienne …” said Addam.

“Ride away,” Jaime said, turning to Addam. “If you mistrust me. If you think you are in danger. I have no way to stop you, nor would I. Go back to Ashemark, go wherever you wish. Both of you.”

Addam looked at Brienne.

“Bran Stark was not like this,” Brienne said. “He was not himself, not … not a man at all but a soulless thing that spoke in a monotone. He cared little for the people around him – comrades, friends, even his family. Jaime … Jaime is not like that at all.”

“I’m _not_ ,” he said. “Nothing has hold of me, nothing is using me. This has been inside me all along. It’s who I am.”

Brienne sighed. This was disturbing to her, as it clearly was to Addam. But … was it more disturbing than Bran? Did she trust Jaime less?

“I will stay,” she said. “Because Sapphire loves you, because she needs her father and because … because we fought hard to get here. But … there will be guards with you. Me, Addam, Nira or Alara. One of us at all times. Yes?”

“Yes. Thank you,” Jaime said.

She didn’t mention her intent that they would be guarding others against him as much as guarding him against others.

“Now,” Jaime said, raising his voice to address the crowd. “We should eat. All of us together. In the Queen’s ballroom in Maegor’s Holdfast.”

He took Sapphire from Brienne’s arms with a smile and limped off into the crowd ahead of them. Brienne saw people approach him, approach Sapphire, smiles on their faces, little gifts of toys for her.

Sapphire clung to her father’s neck, but she smiled at them all too.

“Are you certain about this?” Addam asked Brienne.

“No,” said Brienne. “But he deserves the chance to try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter done! Hope you all enjoyed it. Thanks so much for the myriad of comments and discussion from the last two chapters, it's been so good to hear what you all think, your hopes for the story and your theories on what's going on.
> 
> Three cheers for my comrade CaptianTarthister for being my yardstick and my bestie as always.
> 
> Chapter 4 will be returning to Jaime's POV. If you'd like to get some teasers and updates, then please follow me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/). Come and chat to me about anything and everything, I'd love that!


	4. The Magnificent Yellow Beast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Glinting gold in the lamplight, the whiskers made him look like some great yellow beast, magnificent even in chains."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Banner by the lovely [@WakingDreams82](https://twitter.com/WakingDreams82) on Twitter.

Brienne was drinking moon tea.

Addam brought it to her as she sat, three tables away from Jaime, nursing Sapphire and eating her porridge. Addam put the steaming cup before her, kissed her head and swung his leg over the bench beside her. He broke some bread from the nearest loaf and chewed it while she chatted to him. He looked at her like she was a gift from the Seven.

Jaime had known they were bedding each other again, of course he had. Even in the middle of a city of hundreds of very affectionate couples, in a city where passion was everywhere, Jaime had nonetheless felt the very distinct feeling that was Brienne in love.

Her love stood out to him above all others – a note of high, sweet hope that rose through the ever-warming air—a thrilling song of excitement and joy.

Jaime didn’t need magic to see it, in any case. He could see it well enough with his own two eyes – how Addam and Brienne would sneak off after meetings, how they would return to the training yard a little later, flushed and satisfied and standing a little too close. The lovebites Addam had on his neck and shoulder when Jaime spotted him in the bathhouse. The one he had on his arse.

Brienne had never given Jaime lovebites.

That hurt. Brienne and Addam in love were a beautiful thing, and Jaime was happy for them, he truly was. But … the reality of it cut him in two, as well.

As much as he tried to hide it, as much as he wanted nothing but happiness for them, Jaime also wanted to be the one catching Brienne’s eye, thinking of an excuse to take her back to her chambers. He wanted to be the one to kiss her head and sit with her at breakfast. He wanted to be the one she looked at with those soft, sea-blue eyes and slight dreamy smile. He had been, once.

The moon tea hurt, too. At the Last Hearth, Brienne would have had his son in her belly by now – their second babe. A child who would never even exist because of the choice he’d made, twice over. He could not deny that the thought made him sad.

After breakfast, Sapphire came toddling over to her father through the crowds with Addam holding her hand.

“Can she stay with you for a few hours?” Addam asked. “We want to do some siege tactics up on the walls with the trainee guards. The city walls are no safe place for a babe.”

“Of course,” Jaime smiled.

Sapphire lifted her arms, and he pulled her onto his lap. She picked up a crust of breakfast bread still on his plate and chewed on it. Addam lingered.

“Is something amiss?” Jaime asked him.

“No,” said Addam. “Just … we need weapons. Swords. Shields. Armour too. Do we have your permission to use the ones in the armouries?”

Jaime blinked. “Yes. Of course. Why – why are you asking me?”

“You’re the King, are you not?”

“Not in _that_ way. I don’t own the city, you know. The supplies are there to be used, use them.”

That was how it had worked, these past few weeks. Jaime didn’t need to any governing as such – it seemed that people saw things that needed doing and did them. They shared supplies, they got together in the kitchens and the fields and the granaries to make food, they formed foraging parties to get clothes and medicines from the abandoned parts of the city. It had happened naturally.

“Very good, Your Grace,” Addam said with something dangerously close to a bow.

Jaime laughed. Addam really did not understand at all, did he? The man wore an expression of perpetual confusion, perpetual worry. Jaime suspected that without Brienne, his former bannerman would have ridden for the Westerlands weeks ago.

Could he not see what was happening around him?

Even now, with breakfast over, a group of people had taken it upon themselves to clear tables, to stack chairs and tables to one side and to mop the floors. Jaime hadn’t asked them to do it; it was no one’s _job_ as such _._

He got up himself to help, letting Sapphire run about the floor with a couple of the other children. He spotted a stubborn stain of dried tomato sauce from last night’s fish stew that would take more than mopping to remove. Jaime got to his knees and grabbed a brush from the pile to scrub at it.

A woman mopped past him, a square-jawed redhead of about his own age who he knew was named Dyanne. She had arrived on the seventh day with a pretty maid in her twenties who everyone had assumed was her daughter. Only Jaime had known they were together – only Jaime had seen how deeply in love they were.

It had been a strange thing to realise just how many people were attracted to and in love with people of their own sex. Growing up under the teachings of the Septons, Jaime had always believed it to be a rare perversion, akin to the way he had felt about Cersei. Something to be pitied, but something that should be hidden from decent folk, something that probably caused damage to a person, too. The way that his love for Cersei had damaged both of them.

Living here, among a thousand love stories, Jaime realised there was nothing unnatural about it at all. More people than he could ever have imagined felt attraction, sexual and emotional, towards members of their own sex. Many of them were married and maintained relationships with the opposite sex, as well.

Things were far more complex, far more beautiful, than he had ever believed they were.

But despite this vast array of human attraction that had come to him, it sobered him to realise that not one, not a single one, was a person in love with a family member.

There truly were no men like him.

Once, that had seemed like something he should take pride in. Now it seemed like a sad waste. All these people in love and he unable to. Cursed to feel their love fill them all but never know it for himself.

“Looks like you’re going to need more than one hand for that,” Dyanne said with a grin, breaking Jaime from his reverie. She dropped to her knees and rolled up her sleeves to reveal arms so muscular they rivalled Brienne’s. Picked up a scrubbing brush of her own and started on the other half of the stain.

“My thanks,” Jaime said with a smile.

Dyanne nodded. “Looks like someone dropped most of their plate.”

“Perhaps a child,” he concurred. “My Sapphire throws her food to the floor if you take your eyes off her for even a heartbeat.”

Dyanne laughed. “It will soon come up with a little elbow grease.”

Sure enough, her half of the stain was lifting rapidly.

“Have you thought of trying out for the guard?” he asked her. “Looks like you have the strength for it.”

She laughed. “That’s farm strength. Spent most of my life wrestling pigs back into their pens. Never held a sword or somesuch.”

“Perhaps you should try? Brienne’s a good teacher – she’s taught many to fight, men and women both.”

“Aren’t I a little old?”

“She’s taught older than you,” Jaime said, thinking of some of the women Brienne had trained back at the farm. There had been the cook and the washerwoman who must have been nearing sixty – she’d whipped them into shape well enough. “Try it. If you dislike it, no harm done, is there?”

“This is very true,” Dyanne said. “I should think my Sophey would be impressed were I to come home dressed in armour like your Ser Brienne.”

Jaime smiled. More than a few of the women were quite awestruck by Brienne, he’d noticed.

Distracted for a moment by the feeling of Dyanne’s intense love for her beloved Sophey, he missed Sapphire, across the room, reaching into one of the buckets of soapy water for the bubbles. Before he’d had the time to notice, she had managed to upend the whole thing over herself, soaking her from top to bottom.

The cold, wet shock of it had her spluttering and then bursting into tears. Jaime stumbled to his feet and went to her. Picked her up with a grin.

“Well, that will teach you to be careful around buckets,” he laughed.

She was truly soaked to the skin – she would certainly need a change of clothes.

Jaime looked around for Addam and Brienne, but they had left already, no doubt to begin their siege training on the walls. He could feel Brienne, she was somewhere warm in the sunshine, walking across the yard perhaps. She felt happy; she had reached out and taken Addam’s hand as they walked.

Never mind. Jaime had a few sets of Sapphire’s clothes and some spare napkins in his chambers – he could change and dry her there.

He apologised to Dyanne about leaving her with the rest of the stain and made his way from the Queen’s Ballroom to his chambers.

Sapphire sobbed the whole way, her sniffles echoing off the walls. Snuggling her wet curls into his neck for comfort. Just wanting to be consoled by her father.

Everywhere, people were busy. Sweeping the stairs, mopping the floors, going room-to-room to collect laundry. There was a boy of seven or eight sitting in the map room surrounded by pairs of boots, polishing them intently.

People were also in love.

This had developed more slowly than the work – perhaps people had been shy at first about expressing their feelings. But now, everywhere he went, people held hands, stopped to kiss each other, walked with their arms around each other. The air was filled with the sweet song of love, every note an individual story.

Jaime and Sapphire passed Korin and Mansy, who had come in last week from the Riverlands. His father had been a drunk and a thief. Her father thought she could do better and forbidden them to marry. They had done so anyway, run off together to another village to start their lives because nothing was more important to them than love.

Jaime smiled at them. They smiled back. Wrapped their arms about each other and gazed into each other’s eyes.

He felt the tree’s mark on his chest come to life, flaring a bolt of pleasure through his body. The thrill of their love was wonderful indeed.

A little way along the corridor, a couple made love in their chambers. They were Camyla and Nohario, he from the Free Cities who had given up his whole life to stay in Westeros with a peasant girl. Jaime could feel them, a pulsing swooning feeling of intense power that made him quite breathless. The tree on his skin rippled and darkened.

Further still, Alara and Ellion were hidden in an alcove, behind a suit of plate armour, sharing a kiss and a feel. Now the tree called to Jaime, called to him from the throne room, an almost irresistible pull. He had what it wanted, stored in the mark on his body.

First things first, though – Sapphire was still soaked to the skin.

He took her into the King’s Chamber, set her on the floor and rooted through the drawers for her clothes.

She was still wearing the clothes that Weslar and Kiren had given them back at the hut, the ones that their sons had grown out of. They were getting a little short on her legs and arms now; he would have to go to the downstairs dining hall where the clothes foraged from the city were sorted and distributed.

She ran about the room away from him when he went to collect her, though, faster than he could limp. After he’d chased her about for a few minutes, he cursed and gave up. He had a better idea.

He’d found a little box of toys hidden away in the maid’s quarters next door, the room where Nira had been sleeping. Possibly they had once belonged to his other children. There were a few dolls in there, but most of them were baby toys, including a golden crib charm that he recognised.

It had been his gift to Joffrey on the occasion of his birth, a beautiful, ornate golden lion with emeralds for eyes. He had thought it would look handsome on the baby prince’s crib, but Cersei had disagreed. She had thrown it at him – told him he was bloody foolish and all but advertising the fact that the heir to the throne was, in truth, no stag but a green-eyed lion through and through.

He had not seen the thing until he’d found it at the bottom of the box of toys. He’d thought it lost, destroyed by Cersei.

He’d never bought any of his children a gift after that.

He gave the box of toys to Sapphire now, removing the golden lion head and stashing it in a drawer. It had been a ridiculous thing to buy for a babe, he realised now — sharp edges and too easy to choke on. Too ornamental by far.

Sapphire delved into the box to pull out some twisting contraption that was made of wood and filled with rattling dried peas. The thing fulfilled its obligation – it fascinated her enough to distract her while Jaime wrapped her in a towel and stripped off her wet clothes and napkin.

He dried her and dressed her in a roughspun set of breeches and tunic, both a dark shade of blue.

She even sat well on his lap while he sorted her curls, dripping a little oil into a dish and squeezing it into the pretty golden ringlets, making sure they stayed clumped together while they dried. Brienne was a good mother of course, but she knew nothing of how to care for curls – too often he’d seen her brush them out and leave them a wild mess as a result. A lion’s mane needed care and attention.

Dried and dressed and preened and pretty, Sapphire had a little run about the room while Jaime went out onto the balcony that overlooked the city.

Out there, between the ornately-carved columns, Jaime had strung himself a washing line. As high as the balcony was, and with the lovely warm weather just beginning, his clothes dried well … and so fast! The previous Kings had been missing a trick, using this balcony for dining and drinking and in Robert’s case, whoring. It amused Jaime to use it to get his smallclothes dry.

He pegged out Sapphire’s wet things and went inside to find her crying on the floor. She’d thrown her toy and several others clear across the room.

Breaking her fast and an adventure with a water bucket had tired her out, it seemed. Jaime recognised her crotchety grizzling as that of an exhausted babe. Sure enough, no sooner had he picked her up and limped a few turns about his chambers with her in his arms than she was asleep, snuggled to his chest with her thumb in her mouth.

He set her down on his bed very gingerly, lest he wake her and have to begin the process again. Stayed beside her, rubbing her back until he was certain she was fully asleep. He propped pillows around her to prevent her from rolling off the bed.

The tree still called to him, an itch in his body that was quite akin to the desire for sexual gratification. Sitting among its boughs, wrapped in the branches and the blossom was so unbearably sensual Jaime would not have been surprised to open his eyes to find himself squirting his seed across the throne room.

It was … disturbing, in its way. This thing had taken root in him quite literally. Body and soul. He didn’t know what it was, not truly, nor what it’s purpose was. He only knew it had driven everything that happened in the city since the death of Bran the Broken.

Jaime had nothing to go on but his instinct … but the tree did not feel malevolent. It guided things to where they needed to be, made things feel more definite and more certain, but it did not control things. No one here had experienced anything against their will; the love Jaime felt from the newcomers was not created by the tree. All of them had brought their feelings willingly, donated them gladly.

His urge was almost unbearable now; Jaime went to knock on Nira’s door.

Brienne’s handmaid had been given a bundle of helms and breastplates from the armoury by Addam, all of which were dirty and dusty from disuse. She had instructions to clean them up, ready for distribution at the next training session.

Jaime helped her carry them through into his own chamber, asking that she watch Sapphire while he went to the throne room.

He walked there in silence, but somehow everyone knew where he was going.

Most of the time, Jaime was one of the crowd. Just another face in the castle, a man doing chores and eating meals and looking after his daughter—no difference between him and them.

But when he went to the throne room, Jaime was the King.

As he walked, people stopped what they were doing. Put down their bundles, stopped cleaning, stopped conversations. Stopped their activities and followed him.

He felt them all, felt all their love, felt all their devotion. They followed him through the keep and into the throne room, all of them singing, that song that wasn’t a song at all but a throb of throats, perfectly in unison. Somewhere in the city, someone rang the bells.

They stripped him and washed him as he walked through the doors, sun-warmed bowls of water that were as fragrant as the flowers.

Their soft washcloths traced the path of the branches on his skin, over his chest and down both arms. Down the scars on both his legs.

Jaime ascended his throne – the tree came alive at his touch. Wound about his limbs, held his belly and his chest and his head.

The tree was like being held by Brienne; it was like holding Sapphire. Strength and need and love all at once. It was his protector; it was his reason for being alive.

No one loved like Jaime loved. This full-bodied pulse that filled every vein, every muscle. Only he had this power, only he could do this …

Do what?

Jaime sank into tree’s embrace. Closed his eyes, let the singing and the sweet scent of the blossom take him away.

Bran the Broken was there.

He was in the throne room as it used to be. Dragon skulls, Targaryen banners. The Iron Throne.

Bran sat atop it; Jaime stood at its foot. He wore his golden armour, his white cloak on his back. He had both his hands and his golden curls were oiled and beautiful, tumbling about his shoulders. He was young and strong and seventeen and stupid, just as he’d been when he killed the Mad King.

“Why are we here?” he asked Bran.

“You have questions.”

“Of course I have questions. I’m a King, and I know not why. I love a tree, and I know not why. Can you tell me?”

“I’m still you,” Bran said. “If you expect me to give you answers, then you must believe you know the truth already.”

Jaime’s head hurt. “Just tell me,” he said. “What is the tree?”

Then, Jaime was home.

Not Casterly Rock, not the Red Keep. Not the stifling heat of Brienne’s chambers in Winterfell. Not even the Last Hearth, the home that should have been their home.

Jaime was at the hut. Brick-broken and leaning on his cane, the pail of napkins over his stumped arm. He was down by the river, by his flat rock, his brush and his scraping stone waiting for him.

The river … the river was alive with blossom! The same bright blue blossom that adorned the black tree in the throne room. Petals, thousands and thousands of them, floated downstream, a cacophany of colour and the sound of his subjects singing.

“What does this mean?” Jaime asked. But the sound of his voice broke the spell.

He was back with Bran the Broken again, seventeen again.

Kingsguard. Kingslayer. His golden sword was covered in blood – there was a puddle of it on the floor before the throne. Right where he’d killed Aerys.

Walking through the blood, a trail of blossom in its wake, was a turtle.

Jaime blinked. The turtle kept walking towards him, its footprints blood and blossom. Behind it, behind the doors, something rumbled.

“What’s that?” Jaime asked Bran. But Bran wasn’t there.

It burst through the doors – water! So much water … Jaime threw up his arms to shield himself. When it hit him it wasn’t water at all but …

Wolves! A sea of fur and teeth and yellow eyes and hot breath. Grey eyes. A wolf with a crown that rode a wave. Teeth like a dagger, a dagger that stabbed him in the belly, again and again. Snapped at him with the claws of a crab.

Jaime cried out. The turtle was there. Blossom sprouted from his belly, and the turtle walked through Jaime’s blood, too. The wolves hunkered down, churning and restless and white-eyed.

Jaime fell back to defend himself as the wolves circled. The turtle stretched and grew, and its legs grew long and strong and red and glowed in sunlight. The turtle was a horse. Sunchaser, his saddle emblazoned with Addam’s sigil – the burning tree. The burning tree.

Jaime mounted him. The wolves swirled, waiting to attack.

He drew his sword held it to strike if the dared approach. His sword was not his golden sword, not the sword he’d used to kill the King.

It was Oathkeeper; Oathkeeper sang in his hand. Jaime charged. He knew no more.

He opened his eyes to the real world, and there was Brienne.

Brienne, her eyes wide, her mouth open, her head tipped slightly back on her long neck. Brienne looking the way she had looked as she had peeled her shirt off that first time by the fire in Winterfell. Filled with desire.

Addam was beside her. His eyes were huge and wide. “What’s going on?” Addam asked. “What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” Jaime asked. But then he saw.

Behind Addam and Brienne, on the floor, around the tree, in the galleries above them, Jaime’s subjects held each other.

All of them, paired up, in groups, some on the floor in piles of furs and chairs and cushions. Limbs wound about each other. Holding hands, embracing. A forest of bodies.

They sang. They smiled. Beatific eyes holding Jaime as the tree held him too. Their love coursed through them, focusing them, channelling it all through Jaime.

The feeling was indescribable.

Like flying. Like falling. Like sailing in a storm. Like a surge of tide, like a blur of wolves. Like –

“Something is coming!” Jaime blurted.

He fell from the tree to his knees, into the rich blue of the petals on the floor. His belly was bloody, but there were no stab wounds. The blood was on his hand.

“Jaime!” Brienne cried.

But Jaime was gone. Vanished into the dark.

He woke in his chambers, with Brienne by his bedside, Sapphire in her arms. His legs hurt. His head hurt. He could feel his phantom hand.

Addam pottered in the background, drawing the soft gauze curtains across the windows.

“What happened?” Jaime asked. His throat was thick, and his voice was croaky.

“You had a fit,” Brienne said.

Jaime held up his hand. No blood. Pushed down the blanket that covered him – no blood on his belly, either.

He _was_ still naked, though. He pulled the blanket back up to cover his manhood quickly.

“I’ve not had a fit in moons,” he said. He tried to sit up against the pillows, his head swimming. He’d bitten his tongue, he realised. His mouth tasted like blood.

Brienne nodded. “Are you all right?”

“I believe so. A little weak. A little foggy.”

“What were you doing?” This was Addam. He came to Brienne’s side. Pushed his hair off his face.

“Nothing unusual. But I … I saw something.”

“The people were all … everyone who watched … they were all …” Addam gestured in the air with his hands. Looked to Brienne.

Brienne looked away. Sapphire wriggled and held out her arms for her father; she babbled a stream of nonsense at him.

Jaime took her for a cuddle. She sat on his belly, grabbing a fistful of his chest hair and pulling. Bouncing her bottom up and down on his belly too.

“Seven hells, Sapphire!” he exclaimed, almost feeling his breakfast come up. “I’m not up to that just yet!”

He lifted her onto the mattress beside him, let her bounce _there_ instead.

“What did you see?” asked Brienne. “You mean … another vision?”

Jaime nodded. “It was cryptic. Strange.”

“What did you see?”

He shook his head, trying to make sense of it. “Blood. The throne room. Water and wolves. A turtle.”

“Your tree showed you this?” asked Addam.

Jaime nodded. “Something is coming. That’s what all this is about, all the love, all the people. The tree and my mark.”

“What does that mean?” Addam asked.

“It means we have another war to fight,” said Brienne.

Jaime looked up at her. Her bright blue eyes. He remembered mounting Sunchaser. Drawing Oathkeeper from his scabbard as he prepared to fight.

“I need both of you to help me fight it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There endeth chapter 4.
> 
> Thank you once again to all the commenters for the discussion and feedback and for all the thoughts on the story. They are very much appreciated. Big thanks to my bestie CaptainTarthister too for her encouragement and help throughout. She's a superstar.
> 
> I'm really thrilled to be able to say that my wonderful and generous reader has once again created an [Us Without Each Other playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/32FUnK5tIi3Hqu9rTvjeok)! Check it out, it's amazing and so perfectly captures the mood of this part of the story.
> 
> Stay tuned for chapter 5, coming very soon. If you'd like to get some teasers and updates, then please do consider following me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Until next time!


	5. To Die For Him

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He said that all his other knights wanted things of him, castles or honours or riches, but all that Brienne wanted was to die for him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Banner by the lovely [@WakingDreams82](https://twitter.com/WakingDreams82) on Twitter.

Brienne sank to her chin in her bathwater just as Addam tipped another bucket of hot water into the tub.

That one was a little _too_ hot. She winced and jumped as it splashed her skin.

“Any better?” Addam asked, putting another bucket into the fireplace to warm.

“Much,” she groaned, stretching her legs over the sides of the tub, and rolling her head on her neck.

“That Dyanne was … quite the opponent,” Addam said with a raised eyebrow. He was suppressing a smirk, Brienne could tell.

She had to agree, though. “I was not expecting that.”

After a few days of basic drills, Brienne had decided to let her new recruits try their hand at a little one-on-one. She’d stood there with her blunted tourney sword in hand, expecting them to come at her with the strokes they had learned, expecting to demonstrate a few parries and blocks.

What she hadn’t anticipated was Dyanne barrelling into her, shoulder-first, before she’d even got into her stance. Tackling her about the waist and knocking her clean on her arse.

“It’s probably a useful strategy,” Addam said, not even bothering to hide the mirth from his voice. “If not exactly chivalrous.”

Brienne groaned. She was sore and bruised from the impact, carrying welts from her own armour. “It’s the first time I’ve ever fought a pig farmer.”

“They are formidable opponents,” Addam sniggered. “Who would have known?”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, I suppose I’m glad she’s on our side.”

Brienne accepted the glass of wine Addam had poured her and took a sip. She looked out of the window; it was all but dark.

“Where is Jaime?” she complained. “Sapphire will be tired.”

“Last I saw she was running about the map room with that little lad who cleans the boots.”

Brienne smiled. It _was_ good to see Sapphire with other children again – it would be churlish to complain about her not being home on time if she were having fun.

Instead, she plunged beneath the water completely, rinsed the soap from her hair and washed the dirt from her face, all the mud where she’d landed in a puddle of melted snow.

It had disturbed her, that tackle. It had done what all Bran’s Ravens had failed to do, what even Podrick, a knight she’d trained herself had failed to do – it had taken her utterly by surprise.

She was getting old. Slower to warm up in the mornings, slower to recover from injuries. Part of the problem was her broken pelvis, of course, but the birthing bed had taken its toll on her body, too. No matter how much she trained, her belly was still loose and her thighs much softer than they had ever been. She noticed the difference.

Brienne misliked it. She misliked the thought that she could be knocked off her feet by a pig farmer near ten years her senior. A horde of dead men, fine. The Hound … acceptable. Jaime in his prime …

_In his prime_. That was a sobering thought. Jaime had been knighted at sixteen – Brienne at eight-and-thirty. It had felt like a beginning for her, but here she was, near two years later, realising that she was in decline. A slow one, granted, but noticeable enough.

She looked to Addam, a little sadly, as she soaped between her toes. She’d turned down the chance to be his wife.

He’d stayed in King’s Landing, though. Continued to lie with her. Lived together as though they were wed.

Perhaps she had been hasty. Perhaps she hadn’t thought her answer through. She’d told Addam she wanted to be a knight, but … how many more years was that going to be a reality and not an honorary? How many more years would she actually be useful in a fight? Ten … maybe twenty at the outside? Barristan the Bold had been good to fight at sixty, but he’d not birthed and nursed a babe, nor broken his pelvis trying to protect one.

Maybe settling down with a house to rule and a family to raise was something she should have given more consideration.

Addam smiled at her as he cleaned his boots by the fireside. He looked good, the soft light catching the red of his hair, his sleeves rolled up to show the muscle of his forearms. Gods, she loved him, she truly did. It worked well between them – he would be a decent choice of husband.

So why was she not telling him she had reconsidered?

She got out of the bath with a sad sigh and wrapped herself in a towel, relieved that at least her muscles hurt less. Hopefully, a good night’s sleep would ease both her mind and her body.

She had dried and dressed and was brushing out her wet hair by the time Jaime knocked on the door.

Addam got up to open it – Sapphire was on her father’s shoulder, fast asleep.

“Forgive the late hour,” Jaime whispered as he handed the babe over to Brienne. “We got to talking with Brack and Marcyn about one thing and another, and before we knew it, it was dark outside, and she was all but asleep.”

“Has she eaten?” Brienne asked, noticing that Sapphire was at least in her sleeping shift. A fresh napkin, too.

Jaime nodded. “You know Brack and Marcyn; they like to see her fed. She’s had fruit, and bread, and cheeses and some honeycake. That young farmboy, Erner … he dug up some carrots from one of the gardens near Visenya’s Hill this morning. She’s eaten a couple of those, as well.”

Brienne smiled. “It sounds like she’s had a busy day.”

“Yes, she has.”

Jaime tilted his head to one side and gazed at Sapphire with adoration. “I’d better get over to dinner,” he said. “Before they clear away. Did you get some?”

Brienne shook her head. “I needed to take a bath. After training. So … well, Addam has cooked.”

A huge grin broke out on Jaime’s face – Addam shot her a murderous look.

“Addam has _cooked_?” Jaime asked. “ _Addam_?!”

“Yes.”

“Gods, it’s a good job that a maester came into the city this morning, is it not? I’d best send for him now!”

Addam rolled his eyes. “Hold your tongue; I can cook.”

“Is that so? That’s … not what I recall. I seem to remember a certain rabbit that was both burnt on the outside yet bloody in the middle? And … that soup you made while we were scouting that was just water and vegetables? Oh, and let’s not forget the roasted rat.”

“Rat?!” asked Brienne.

“Don’t listen to him,” Addam cried. “It was not a rat!”

Jaime’s smirk grew even wider. “What was it, then?”

“I don’t –”

“Don’t ask him, he doesn’t _know_! He went hunting around these old ruins while we camped nearby. Came back with this _thing_ , all skinned and stuffed for the fire. At first, he said it was a rabbit, but we all ate it, and we all knew it was no rabbit. Later, he confessed he’d killed the thing in the dark and had no clue what it was.”

“We were hungry!” Addam protested, but he was laughing as well.

“You were drunk, you mean.”

“Well, yes. That too.”

“The gods alone know what that thing was.”

“It fed us, did it not?”

“Not well,” Jaime laughed. “It wriggled in my belly for some hours after!”

“It did taste a little … muddy,” Addam admitted.

Jaime made a face of disgust. “It was a rat, I’m all but certain.”

“It was no rat!”

Jaime raised his eyebrows. “Well, good luck, Brienne. Enjoy your rat. I can only hope you survive the night.”

He turned to go, but Addam stopped him. “Oh, no. Sit down.”

“What?”

“Sit down. You’re eating with us.”

“The rat?!”

“It’s no rat! I made fish … a fish stew!”

Jaime turned to Brienne, still laughing, eyes crinkled and his face so handsome she was right back in Winterfell, drinking opposite him at the feast after they had survived the dead. “You did _see_ this fish, yes?”

“Wh-what?” Brienne was burning. Stammering.

“She’s seen it!” Addam laughed. “That couple, the Dornish couple with the little fishing boat. I got it from them this afternoon!”

Brienne fled. Went through the archway into the bedroom, thankful that she hadn’t had the chance to light a fire in here yet. Needing some cold air on her glowing face. She rocked Sapphire a little, even though she didn’t really need it. Put her gently in the little cot they’d found for her.

When she returned, Jaime was sat at the table, a bowl and a spoon placed in front of him. Still laughing and teasing Addam. His green eyes sparkled in the candlelight as he looked up to Brienne. Gods, why must he do this? Why must he be so inescapably beautiful?

“Is all well?” Jaime asked.

“Yes. Yes – why – why would I not be?”

“Sapphire?” said Addam. He too looked at her with confusion even as he stirred his stew.

“Oh yes … she’s asleep. Still asleep. She went down fine.”

“Good,” Addam said. “Do you want some wine? Ale?”

“Ale,” she said. “Please.”

Addam nodded. He crossed the room and leaned out of the window, coming back with a couple of bottles under his arm. He’d tied a bag outside to keep their ale cool.

“Not for you, Jaime?”

Jaime shook his head; Addam opened the bottles. Poured Jaime some water.

Brienne pulled her chair out and sat down at the head of the table. The Lord Commander’s seat. Took her ale from Addam with a smile.

His fingers brushed hers as he passed her the bottle. Thankfully, it did what his touch always did, sending a bolt of lightning up her arm. Addam was beautiful, too, he truly was. His luxurious copper hair, the silver in his beard. His soft lips that felt so good against hers when they kissed …

“Have you had any more visions?” Addam asked Jaime.

Brienne broke out of her lustful reverie and buried her face in her ale.

Jaime’s brow furrowed – all the merriment of the moment before drained from his face. He twisted his cup with his fingers. “No. I … nothing more.”

The visions had troubled him, Brienne knew. He had not spoken about them much after he had woken from his fit. They had troubled _her_ , too. His proclamation that they would have to fight another war. “What _exactly_ did you see?” she pressed, as gentle as she could.

He shook his head. “A confusing jumble of things. The hut, the river full of blossom. The throne room. Myself as a boy, as a Kingsguard. Wolves that came at me in waves, like the sea. A turtle.”

“A turtle?” asked Addam.

Jaime nodded. “It walked through Aerys’ blood towards me. Saved me from the wolves.”

“Turtle … House Estermont, perhaps?” Brienne suggested. “Has anyone from Estermont come here?”

“No,” Jaime told her, without hesitation. He knew the origins of everyone here. “I can’t think of the Estermonts’ connection to me. They fought for Stannis in the last war, but bent the knee to Joffrey after, well before I returned to the capital. I … visited them once, when Cersei and Robert were new-married. Their castle was so dreary I named it Greenshit instead of Greenstone. That’s … about all. Oh, and I once mistook Tarth for Estermont.”

“Hmm,” said Addam.

“Tarth is nothing like Estermont,” said Brienne, a little offended.

“Perhaps we should seek an alliance with them? Perhaps that is what your dream suggested?” Addam said.

Jaime shook his head. “I don’t believe that’s how this works.”

“How what works?” Brienne asked.

Addam sampled his stew with a frown. Added some salt.

“This,” Jaime replied. “Us. Me as King. I don’t think we need alliances and men and armies.”

“How in all the hells are we supposed to fight a war, then?” Addam asked.

“It won’t be a war like that.”

“The wolves are the Starks, aren’t they?” Brienne said in a quiet voice. “You think we will go to war with the North.”

Jaime sighed. “They started a war when I pushed Bran out of the window. This time he’s actually dead.”

It was hard to disagree with him. They fell silent as Addam spooned his stew into their bowls, Brienne thinking of the cold sadness of Sansa Stark’s eyes. Her fierce pride, that ferocious scorn and bitterness she had at Brienne’s love for Jaime.

“This … this looks almost edible,” Jaime said with an attempt at a smile.

“It’s edible!” said Addam. He took the seat nearest to Brienne and picked up his spoon.

She tried some. Smiled at him. “It’s good.”

“No rats,” he said to Jaime.

“For once I can believe that,” Jaime grinned.

They fell back into silence as they ate, tearing chunks off the loaf of bread in the middle of the table to dip into the stew.

“How would we fight the Starks?” Addam asked after a moment. Pausing to take a sip of his ale. “You didn’t answer me. How would we fight them with no army? No alliances.”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you going to crush all of them with trees, too?”

Addam had clearly meant to be sarcastic, but Jaime answered him earnestly. “Perhaps.”

“You can do that?” Brienne asked. “A whole army?”

“Perhaps,” Jaime said again. “If I were strong enough.”

“And are you?” Addam asked.

“I think I could be.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I can feel it. I feel … full of something. Like something grows inside me.”

Brienne looked at him, at the firelight on his golden skin. For a moment, she thought she could see the mark of the tree, forking across his chest and down his arms. But of course, he was wearing a tunic. She couldn’t see his body at all.

“I realise that makes me sound as though I have lost my wits,” Jaime continued.

“No,” said Brienne.

“Yes,” said Addam. “A little.”

“You don’t feel it, do you?” Jaime asked him.

“What?” Addam paused, his spoon halfway to his mouth. Dripping stew.

“Brienne does.”

“I do?”

“You do. You feel the pull of the tree. It affects you.”

Brienne stammered for a moment, not sure how to answer. Both Addam and Jaime’s gazes on her. Intent. “I … I suppose it does,” she said eventually.

“You believe in this?” Addam asked incredulously.

“It’s not a question of believing,” she said. “We’ve seen it, we’ve seen what it can do. But it … it attracts me. In the way I assume it attracted all these people. I suspect I would have been one of them had I not already been here.”

Jaime nodded. “I think so, too.”

“Why?” asked Addam. There was something in his eyes that was almost hurt.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It feels like I have a part to play.”

“I believe you both do,” said Jaime softly. “The vision showed me. I saw myself riding into battle on Sunchaser. Wielding Oathkeeper.”

They all fell silent.

“Both of us …” Brienne breathed.

Addam put his spoon down. “I feel nothing. This all seems like madness to me. I see it happening, and yet it makes no sense. I can’t understand why people would be drawn to a tree, magical or otherwise. I can’t believe they would be drawn to _Jaime_.”

Jaime grinned at that. “What’s wrong with me?”

Addam grinned back. “For one, you’re the most sarcastic arse who ever lived.”

“You’ve hung around me long enough.”

“I’m your bannerman! It’s my job!”

“We’ve had good times, have we not?”

“Yes, the rat was a high point.”

“We _have,_ though. You were with me when I made my first kill, fighting at my back. You were there when I was knighted, as I was for you. You were by my side during my trial after I killed Aerys, when Robert Baratheon pardoned me. The Siege of Pyke, too. And riding back to King’s Landing, when we were beset by those bandits, and we killed near twenty men, just the two of us, without a lick of armour. I remember those times as good. As fun. We were as brothers, were we not?”

Addam looked down into the contents of his bowl. “We were not,” he said. “Not truly. Not ever after what happened with Cersei.”

Jaime’s face fell. “I –”

Addam shook his head. There was genuine pain on his face, even after all these years. “She was jealous. Spiteful and vicious. She could not share even a part of you.”

“I know.”

“Why did you lie? Your father … _my_ father! They both believed I –”

“I believed it, too,” Jaime said. His voice was small. “Cersei told me, and I believed her. She told me I’d seen it with my own eyes, and I believed that, too.”

“What?”

“She said to me ‘Jaime, you were there. You saw what he did to me.’ And … I truly believed I had. _Truly_.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. There are a lot of things … a _lot_ that are like that. I can’t give you an answer.” He glanced at Brienne, too, a flare of sadness passing over his features.

Addam looked away.

“I am sorry,” Jaime said. “That’s not an apology – apologies mean nothing, anyone can say words, just as any fool can make an oath. I mean … thinking about my actions makes me feel sorrow, because I know they must have hurt you. And continued to hurt you. I – I respect you. As a knight, as a man ... I admire your skills, I enjoy your company. You deserved better than the man I was.” His eyes went to Brienne as he finished. Held them. He didn’t look away.

“I have made my peace,” Addam said. “Things have changed.”

“They have,” Jaime said.

Addam turned back to Jaime. “I can see that. I could see it from the moment I found you at the hut. You’ve taken off that Lannister mantle … you’re less like a man drowning than you ever have been. You’re a father, now – one who takes care of his child. A King – of sorts – who cares for his people. For all your knighthood and your golden armour and your white cloak, I respect you more now than I ever have before.”

Jaime nodded. His brow furrowed, and he bit his bottom lip. He was quiet for a long moment. “I … I suppose respect myself more, too.”

Brienne looked into her bowl, spooning the last few hunks of fish into her mouth even though she didn’t feel particularly hungry any more. Her face burned.

“Brienne,” said Jaime.

She held up a hand. “No. Not me. Please don’t tell me you’re sorry.”

“What? Why?” he asked. “Don’t you think I owe it to you?”

“I can’t listen to it.”

Addam and Jaime looked at each other. Jaime reached for her; she pulled away.

“No!” she said again. “I said I don’t want to.”

“But I thought …”

“Yes. Yes – you were right. Things are better. Things are well. We care for Sapphire together, we can laugh and eat dinner together and be as friends. But _this_ … talking about _that …_ I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to forgive you.”

She was very aware of Addam’s eyes on her, dark and heavy. She turned away from _him_ , too.

“Why must I forgive you?” she asked Jaime. “Why is that a thing I am expected to do?”

“I don’t know,” Jaime said. “It makes things feel … better? It would be a new start.”

“You think you can just rub over me, like chalk on slate? You think that’s how it is? We can never go back to the way we were. I can never erase what you did from my life, it is a part of me as much as the colour of my eyes.”

“I know that.”

“Then what do you think we would gain from my forgiving you? This man you are now … this decent father, this inspirational leader … I saw it years ago, from the bathhouse in Harrenhal. It was this man I stood up for, this man I defended. This man I fell in love with. This isn’t some revelation to me, that you can care for me when I’m injured and be a good father to our child. I knew all of that. I _always_ saw it.”

“Brienne …”

“Did I not stand up for you in Winterfell and tell them all – the Starks, the Dragon Queen – that you were a good man? Did I not tell _you_? This was never about you changing. Showing me who you could be and then being forgiven and going back to what we were. This was never about _you_.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s about me. Deciding my own life, choosing what I want from what I have left. Turning it into freedom rather than exile.”

Something burned in Jaime’s eyes for the briefest of heartbeats. Something hot and sad and desperate. But he blinked, and it went away. He smiled instead, that handsome, charming, brilliant smile that made her feel the way it always had. That, she had to admit, was also a part of her. “Of course,” he said.

She reached across the table and squeezed his arm. His skin felt warm through his tunic. “We’ve worked hard for what we have now. It feels … it feels _better_. Like we are better to each other. Better _for_ each other.”

Jaime nodded. Put his hand on top of hers and squeezed. Ran his thumb over Brienne’s knuckles, back and forth.

She reached for Addam with her free hand, squeezed his arm, too. She looked between the two men, smiling at them both. “It truly does feel like we’re doing something new here, does it not? Finding new ways.”

Jaime nodded.

Addam grinned. “Who would have thought the Cult of Jaime would actually _work_?”

Jaime grinned too. “I’m as surprised as anyone.”

“ _I_ can believe it,” Brienne said. She reclined in her chair and took a swig of her ale. “I know we jest about it but … this is always who you were.”

“You truly think so?” Jaime looked profoundly touched.

“Yes. So much more _you_ than the golden hand and the golden armour. So much more you than the tales of killing twenty men without armour.”

Jaime blinked at that. Looked to Addam. Back to Brienne. “You think that was a tale?”

Brienne spluttered her ale. “You killed near _twenty men_? Without armour?”

“Yes?” said Jaime.

“What of it?” asked Addam.

“Of course that’s a tale!”

“You don’t believe it?” asked Addam.

“You have seen us fight, yes?” said Jaime.

“Of course! And your swordsmanship is beyond compare,” she rolled her eyes. “But … _twenty_?”

“There were twenty,” Jaime said.

“Definitely twenty,” Addam concurred.

“Twenty what, greybeards and green boys?”

“They were bandits, not castle-forged knights, I grant you –” said Jaime.

“And they kept coming at you, did they? With the bodies of their bandit friends piling up about your boots?”

“They were probably drunk?” Addam guessed.

“I expect _you_ were!” laughed Brienne.

“I can prove it!” Jaime cried. He got to his feet. Pulled at the hem of his tunic.

“Yes!” Addam jumped up, too. He started untying the laces on his shirt.

“What are you doing?!”

Both of them pulled their shirts off. Threw them onto the table.

“Look!” Jaime cried triumphantly. He reached around to the right side of his chest, lifting his arm to show an old scar, all but faded to white, that slashed across his ribs.

“Here’s mine!” said Addam. He had to part the hair on his torso, but he had an identical scar, a little lower.

“The same bandit,” said Jaime, “cut us both. The same slash of his sword as we stood back-to-back.”

The two of them stood together, to show Brienne. The scars intersected, lining up perfectly when they stood with their backs pressed together. A white line through hair and muscle and skin. Golden skin and skin covered with rich copper hair. So much skin …

Brienne swallowed.

Suddenly the air was sweltering. Sweat sprang from under her arms, and something in her belly knotted tight. Pounded. She couldn’t breathe.

“Put – put your clothes back on,” she stammered.

“Who?” said Addam.

“B-both of you.”

“What?”

They stepped apart. Turned to face each other. Looked at each other and then at Brienne.

Addam looked confused, but Jaime _knew_. His eyes … gods, his smouldering eyes … they burned into her, alive with the firelight, pulling her in, consuming her …

“Oh,” said Addam. His voice was strange.

She looked at him. His eyes wide, his mouth slightly open, his chest rising and falling, faster and faster. He didn’t put his shirt back on. Neither did Jaime.

She went over to them. Stood between them. Both men stood still; absolutely still. The three of them breathed together.

“Brienne?” asked Addam.

“We have to fight a war together,” said Brienne. “Don’t we?”

Brienne touched them both; she slid her hands through their chest hair, up between their nipples. Feeling both their hearts beat beneath her fingers. Their hearts were both so fast – as fast as hers. It felt like they all breathed together.

Addam’s eyes were wide as they looked up at her – was he shocked? Brienne was a little shocked at herself. This was bold – beyond bold.

Addam looked at Jaime. Jaime looked back at him, he hung his head. Was that shame on his face? Embarrassment? Caught wanting a woman that belonged to another man?

Brienne belonged to no man. She was not a woman men should want.

“We do,” said Addam. “A war of love.”

He smiled – he stepped towards her; her hand slid over his chest and up over his shoulder. She felt the play of his muscles, the lean hard warmth of him. He kissed her. Broke the kiss to smile at her again.

Then, he looked to Jaime with that same smile. Stood aside for him.

Jaime crept closer. Closer still. He looked terrified, like a cornered animal, his breaths short and sharp and shaking. He dropped his head, so his golden hair fell over his face in strands of liquid firelight.

Gods, he was beautiful. They were both so beautiful.

Jaime reached for Brienne with his hand trembling. Touched her arm, the merest whisper of fingertips, the slightest shudder of breath. He pressed the softest, most reverent kiss to her shoulder. Looked up at her with huge eyes.

Addam kissed her again. Hard. Passionate. Hungry, the way it had always been between them. Sliding a hand into her hair. Jaime ran his lips across the line of her collarbone, still gentle, still so tentative.

Gods, what was happening? Brienne’s head swam with desire. She had never felt this way, not even as the greenest youth, not even when her womanhood had just flowered, and all her foolish mind could think on was boys.

_You truly are a whore now_ , a voice that sounded suspiciously like her father said in her head.

Brienne laughed. She was pressed between the hot, half-naked bodies of two beautiful men and gods, she didn’t care.

Addam’s mouth slid down her neck, and the laugh turned to a gasp. Then a sigh.

Jaime leaned up to take her mouth with his. Not the kisses he had given her at Winterfell, not the hot, desperate kisses of the man on fire, burning himself up desperately before he disappeared into the night. This was the kiss of a man longing, and hungering, and daring to hope.

She rocked her head in rhythm with his, moaned into his mouth as he moaned into hers. Addam’s hands were under her tunic, lifting it until the licking heat of the fire was on her exposed breasts. This was madness. Madness!

So be it – she wanted to be mad. One hand clutched at Jaime’s curls, the other dug into Addam’s hair as he suckled at her nipples. Hot breath, the pull of his lips, the sweet bite of his teeth.

Jaime stroked her face as he kissed her; his thumb rubbed a path from the corner of her lips where they were locked with his. And gods, the smell of his skin, the taste of his kiss … it burned love and hate and fear and rage in her belly all at once. Jaime …

Jaime.

Then somehow, they had swapped. Addam was kissing her lips and Jaime her breasts. Her tunic was gone and there were hands all over her. Her hands were everywhere too – on their bodies, on her own. She pulled at her own breeches, getting them off her hips, dropping them to the floor. Naked for them, naked for herself.

Jaime was naked too, his lean, leonine form curled on his knees in front of her. He kissed her legs, soft, hungry kisses that turned to licks and sucks and nibbles on her sensitive inner thighs. Addam stood behind her, arms about her belly, his hard hot cock pressed to the small of her back. Her head tipped back so she could kiss him and kiss him and kiss him and …

Oh

Jaime’s mouth was on her, in supplication between her legs. His hand on her thigh, his stump on her hip, his tongue a slow swirl of sweetness that swept her higher and higher and had her weeping swooning gasping grasping Addam, thrusting helplessly into Jaime’s mouth.

Oh, gods.

She was lost. Weak-kneed. Inarticulate.

They were all naked. All kissing. All three of them standing in the firelight, dizzy with the heat. Brienne moved between both men, turning and twisting in their arms, giving herself and taking them both, their hands and mouths burning on her skin.

Jaime to Brienne, his lips thick with the taste of her cunt. The mark of the tree alive on his chest, swollen and hot. Brienne to Addam, needing him, needing him to be real, to hold back the force of her feelings. She and Jaime would drown each other, but Addam … Addam wouldn’t let her go.

Then, hot and flushed and drunk with the heat, she took their hands and silently led them into the darkness of the Lord Commander’s bedchamber.

It was cool in here, and utterly pitch dark. The only sound was the sound of Sapphire’s soft snores. Brienne lay back on the furs of the bed and reached out for whoever would come to her.

Jaime came first, with a sigh of such sad longing it made Brienne want to comfort him. He came to her with kisses so soft she thought she would lose her mind with desire. He felt different to the way he had felt before, so much lighter, so much smaller. She wrapped him in her arms and her legs, and he all but disappeared.

He was inside her. On top of her. Trying to lose himself in her, face buried in her neck, his hand clutching hers, their fingers laced together. Jaime. Jaime …

Then, just as she thought Jaime would peak, it was Addam, pulling her atop him, holding her hips as she sank onto his cock; she clutched his thighs beneath her.

Jaime tipped her head back on her neck to kiss her, stroking his stump up and down the curve of her neck. His hand on the small of her back.

She was selfish and greedy with them, moved the way she needed to move, broad circles of her hips that rubbed her clit against the hair on Addam’s body. Ground his cock into that sweet spot so deep inside her. Jaime swallowed her cries as she came.

Then they were all under the furs together, in the dark, and Brienne lost track of who she was kissing, who she was making love to. Sometimes she recognised Addam’s scent, recognised the hair on his back or the taste of his kiss, sometimes she recognised Jaime’s desperate pants as he fought to stop himself coming, but mostly, it didn’t matter.

She’d had more climaxes than she could count, from their hands, their mouths, from rubbing herself against a pillow while she sucked one cock and then another. It felt as though her whole body was filled with pleasure, it flowed through her veins instead of blood.

It ended with them all on their sides, Jaime in front and Addam behind. Kissing one of them while the other penetrated her. Thrusting until they were close and then stopping to let the other take their turn.

Jaime lost his control first, giving a loud cry that Brienne worried would wake Sapphire.

“Wait,” she gasped. “Not –”

But he’d already pulled out. Clutching her against him as he spurted on her belly and thighs. Groaning. The mark of the tree hot enough to feel like it was searing her skin.

Addam slid back inside her as she held Jaime’s limp, sighing form against her, rippling sensuously against her back.

Jaime kissed her, sated and grateful, as Addam fucked her. His kisses trailed from her mouth to her neck to her nipples, through the wet mess of his own seed on her belly.

She pushed him down – felt him chuckle against her cunt. Clamped his head between her thighs and cried out as he sucked her clit between his lips.

Oh gods, it was her dream. Her dream …

Addam’s cock and Jaime’s tongue, working in desperate, fevered counterpoint on her cunt. The feeling turned her inside out, sent her swooning into a world of sweet wild agony, curled toes and clenched teeth and a burst of bright blue blossom when she came.

Gods, Jaime’s beard burned her thighs, his moustache rasped the shaft of her clit, she could feel the vibrations of his moans go right through her body. Addam’s cock pumped through it all, relentless and endless and so so _hard_. She was wrapped in the muscle of them both, a part of their bodies, their sweat and her sweat and the scent of Jaime’s seed surrounded her …

Brienne was gone. Brienne was this light white creature, wrapped in a tree. A creature of gold, a creature of copper. A creature soaked in blood approached. She turned to it and exploded.

Then she was back in bed, in the dark of the Lord Commander’s chambers, wrapped in Addam and Jaime. Addam huffed hard, sated breaths against her shoulder; her arse was bathed in his seed. Jaime kissed his way back up her body. Buried himself in her neck.

No one said anything. They were done.

After a moment, Addam shifted. Rolled to the side with a groan. He lit a candle by the bedside.

The sheets were a mess, pulled half off the mattress. The furs were puddled at the footboard. Pillows were everywhere.

And in the middle of it all, blinking in the candlelight … Brienne, Jaime and Addam. Naked. Red. Wild-haired and swollen-lipped and covered in each other’s _everything_.

“Gods …” said Brienne.

“Gods,” agreed Addam. He looked at Brienne. “Do you want … I should probably …” He gestured vaguely to the table.

He went to it, poured some water into the washbowl and brought it to the bed. Wet one of the washcloths. “You’re rather _covered_ ,” he said with a glance to Jaime. “Our apologies.”

“Yes,” said Jaime. “Of course.”

Jaime picked up the other washcloth, wrung it out as best he could with one hand and used it to wipe Addam’s seed from her back while Addam cleaned her thighs and belly of Jaime’s.

“Thank you,” Brienne said. “Thank you _both_.”

Addam nodded.

Jaime looked … well, he looked _stunned._ Wide-eyed and open-mouthed and like he wasn’t quite sure what had happened. Quite beautiful, though, Brienne thought. Only he could come out of an episode of sexual melee like _that_ with every curl in place. Brienne already knew without the need for a looking glass that her own hair would look like a fool’s hat.

“Are you all right?” she asked Jaime as the mark of the tree began to fade on his chest.

Jaime splashed his face in the washbowl. Addam passed him a little soap for his beard. “I think so?”

Addam rinsed his face in the bowl after Jaime – Brienne watched him with soft eyes. He returned the bowl to the table, peered into the cot to check on Sapphire on his way back and then sat down on the bed alongside them.

No one said anything.

“Together,” Jaime said after a moment. He looked between the two of them. “Like my … like the vision. The three of us together.”

Brienne nodded. “Is _this_ what it meant? Because I thought you meant fighting and … well, I think I just had sex with two men at once?”

Addam laughed.

“How do you feel about it?” asked Jaime. His stump rested on her knee.

“Strange?” she shrugged. “Tired? How should I feel?”

Neither man answered.

“How do you both feel?”

“Overwhelmed,” said Jaime.

Addam just swallowed.

“Addam?” Jaime looked to Addam. There was fear in his eyes.

Addam sighed. “I have no objections, Jaime. Don’t fear my envy.”

“But you … and Brienne are – the two of you are –”

“We are, but … so are the two of you.”

Jaime looked to Brienne.

“I know, it’s complicated. And you can’t be _together_. I understand. And we can’t be married and take Sapphire from you, so …”

He trailed off, looking at the two of them. “A new way of doing things, perhaps?”

“Perhaps,” said Brienne.

Addam got up again, poured them each a glass of water.

Brienne took hers, looking at both the men thoughtfully. She relaxed back on the pillows, wincing slightly at the ache in her pelvis. Most of that was Dyanne, but, well … _this_ hadn’t helped.

“I should take my leave, though,” Jaime said, pulling back the bedsheets and giving Brienne a lingering look. “Discretion and –”

“No,” said Brienne.

“No?”

She shook her head. “When I was a girl on Tarth, my father had many women after my mother’s death. Believe it or not, he’s an attractive man! Some of them were noblewomen, of course, hoping he might marry them and give them sons who would rule the island, but most of them were just women. Singers, kitchen workers, handmaids … one of the Septas. I didn’t pay too much attention, it wasn’t my place to. But … I wasn’t blind. Sometimes after feasts or parties, he would take two such women back to his chambers.”

She took a sip of her water.

“Probably they did what we just did here. And the next morning, nothing changed for my father. He ate breakfast, he had meetings in his solar, he trained in the yard. He held his head up around his men – he felt no shame for taking his pleasures with women who were all but strangers to him. I see no reason why I should feel dishonourable for bedding two men who … who I … who mean what you do to me.”

Jaime nodded. He looked at her as though she were something celestial that had fallen from the sky at his feet. “Very well, I’ll … I’ll stay, then.”

“Please,” Brienne said. “The bed is a little small for three, I suppose but … I would like it.”

He nodded again. Pulled the sheets back up to his chest and took hold of her hand.

Jaime was on his side of the bed, so Addam shoved Brienne into the middle and lay on her pillow, the one with the wet spot.

She lay between them, holding both their hands on top of the sheets. So much happening. So much still to say.

She turned to Jaime. Jaime looked at her.

“Don’t you dare leave while I’m sleeping,” she said.

He let out a huff of laughter, but he squeezed her hand tight. As he squeezed, the mark of the tree crept up her forearms. Addam’s too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, very sorry to everyone for yesterday. This chapter was really bugging me and it didn't feel right at all. Rather than give you something substandard, I took the decision to take it down and work on it some more until I was happy with it. I hope those of you who got to read the first version will agree that this is much improved and more inkeeping with the spirit of the story as a whole. HUGE THANKS to CaptainT and TimeTravelingArcheologist for the time they put in to help and for all the wonderful suggestions. Huge thanks too to everyone who messaged me and checked up on me with messages of support. That really meant so much and really spurred me on to get it right for all of you. I really do have the loveliest readers in the fandom. Thank you all.
> 
> Speaking of lovely readers, I hope that you will check out the wonderful [Us Without Each Other playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/32FUnK5tIi3Hqu9rTvjeok)! It's compiled and updated by a PARTICULARLY lovely reader who I am super grateful to. 
> 
> Chapter 6 will be with you very soon, and hopefully without the drama! If you'd like to get some teasers and updates, then please do consider following me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/).


	6. What A King Should Look Like

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This is what a king should look like, he thought to himself as the man passed."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Banner by the lovely [@WakingDreams82](https://twitter.com/WakingDreams82) on Twitter.

Jaime woke up to find Brienne had been watching him sleep.

It was early morning – buttery dawn light seeped through the soft linen curtains, and all was quiet. Addam slept, the other side of Brienne, belly-down with his face squashed into the pillow, his arm thrown over her waist.

Sapphire slept in her cot, too, finally. Her legs tucked beneath her and her bottom in the air. She’d had a terrible night’s sleep, waking at least once an hour to cry – Jaime suspected more teeth were on their way.

Jaime looked at their daughter and smiled. Brienne smiled, too.

Today wasn’t just any day. Today was Sapphire’s first nameday.

Their child. Their baby. Jaime lifted his lips to Brienne’s, then pressed more kisses to her face. She sighed and set her hand on the laces of the tunic he’d pulled on when Sapphire woke in the night. She undid them and slipped her fingers inside. Her eyes were huge.

He pulled his tunic off over his head while he held her eyes, and they went back to kissing. Her hands drifted into his chest hair, caressing his nipples. Unhurried. Warm. Stroked down the mark of the tree as it appeared on his arms.

Beneath the furs, his cock was enormous, hard in that way cocks only are first thing in the morning. He thought he might die from the feeling of it, that sweet swollen yearning. Physical. Potent.

Jaime curled beside Brienne, she on her back and he on his side, his legs tucked beneath hers. He wrapped his arms tight around her belly. She slid a hand between her legs to open herself to him, to guide him as he slid inside her. Easily, so easily. Wet and warm and slick and sweet. Both of them groaned at the feeling. Gazed into each other’s eyes.

“I love you,” he whispered against her shoulder. The feeling ached inside him, so strong it had to spill from his mouth as words. She wouldn’t say it back, he knew. But it didn’t matter. Jaime _knew_.

Brienne reached behind herself. Shook Addam awake.

“What?” Addam groaned. He opened his eyes and wiped drool from his beard. Saw what Jaime and Brienne were doing. “Oh.”

He sleepily tucked himself against Brienne’s other side, his hand wandering over her breasts as she turned her head to kiss him. Her hand slid down the fur on Addam’s chest and belly and wrapped around his cock.

And then they were all moving. Clinging together, sweating and panting and grasping and needing. Legs wound around each other’s, Brienne moving from one man’s kiss to the other, the pressure building and building and building.

Jaime got close, and pulled out to let Addam take his turn. He was impressed with himself, though – he was lasting longer and longer these days. For some reason, sharing sexual encounters with another man had really helped his control. As much as it wasn’t Addam he was there for, and not Addam he paid attention to during their encounters, Jaime couldn’t help but notice the things Brienne’s other lover did that helped him stay in control for so long while inside her.

He’d noticed that Addam varied the speed and depth of his thrusting quite a bit, never letting himself get lost in the rhythm, never letting it subsume him until he was ready. Jaime had tried it himself, and had been astonished by how much difference it made. The swapping over helped quite a bit, too. It gave him a chance to cool off and stay in control.

It had been a fortnight since he and Addam had lain with Brienne together for the first time. They had done it every night since and oftentimes during the day, too, if Sapphire napped. It had been exhilarating. Fulfilling. Sweet and beautiful and so much _fun_.

Jaime had never had fun sex before.

Sex with Cersei had been dramatic and passionate and dangerous. It had been a battlefield; it had been about control. Sex with Brienne had been … well, it hadn’t been _right_. So many feelings he hadn’t allowed himself to feel. So much guilt, so much angst. So much throwing himself at her and then walling himself off from her, trying to outrun the beast on his back.

But this … this was lovely. The three of them together … they jested, they teased each other, poked fun at each other, laughed together when the two men found themselves in ludicrous positions trying to pleasure Brienne. It was like making love to your two best friends, which … well, he _was_.

It had brought out things in all three of them they hadn’t known were there.

Last night, he and Addam had retired to the White Sword Tower after washing the pots and pans from dinner. Brienne had gone before them to put Sapphire to bed, and when they’d arrived, she was waiting for them. Waiting for them wearing a priceless antique Kingsguard helm, pauldrons and a long white cloak … and nothing else. Jaime and Addam had pretty much fallen at her feet.

It had been so … _wonderful_ to see her laugh at their eagerness, even better when they stopped her laughter, taking turns on their knees before her.

Just as their skills complemented each other in battle, so they did in the bedchamber, too. Jaime could spend hours with his head between Brienne’s legs, lost in the taste and scent and the strength of her thighs around his face. Addam, he’d noticed, much preferred Brienne’s teats – he liked to suckle from her like a babe, much to Jaime’s amusement.

And Brienne … she did entirely different things with Addam than she did with Jaime. She was gentle and tender with Jaime, reverent almost, whereas with Addam she was far more playful, sucking lovebites into his skin and swapping positions all the time. She also liked to stick her fingers in his arse, which was the only time Addam really _couldn’t_ control himself.

Now, they had Brienne sighing and moaning between them, sucking a nipple each while trying not to bump heads. Her hands roamed over their bodies, stroking skin and grasping hair – Addam’s bicep, his chest hair. Jaime’s curls and then his arse cheek. Pushing him closer. Closer still.

“Let’s try that thing …” she panted. “That thing with both of you. At the same time.”

They both released her nipples with a slurp. Last week, while Addam and Brienne were both more than a little drunk, they had started musing on how both men might make love to Brienne at once. She had flatly refused to try anything involving her arse, and they had already done pretty much everything involving her mouth, so Addam had suggested they both try her cunt. At the same time.

Jaime had been sceptical – unsure they would both fit. Brienne had rather indelicately described how the entire of Sapphire had come out of there – she was quite certain it could take something as small as their two cocks.

Jaime hadn’t been sure if his manhood was being insulted or not, but in the end, Sapphire had woken, he and Addam had fallen asleep, and they hadn’t tried it. It seemed like Brienne had not forgotten, though.

“Now?” asked Addam.

She nodded, pushing Jaime’s arse again. “Now.”

“Like this?” Jaime whispered. “I don’t know if this is the best position –”

“Try?”

Jaime acquiesced and wriggled closer, using his stumped right arm to anchor himself and grasping his cock in his left hand. They were nought but a tangle of legs on the lower half of the bed – this was not going to be easy. Addam tried to wriggle out of the way a little, letting Jaime get one of his legs beneath his, trying to give him some room to get his cock into position.

“Let me just –” Brienne said, trying to get her own legs out of the way.

“Ow!” Addam complained when Jaime’s knee caught him in the balls.

“Sorry. I can’t – can you just … move …” Jaime wriggled.

“I don’t think it will work this way,” Addam grunted.

“I’m not sure it will work _at all_ ,” Jaime complained.

“Shh!” Brienne hissed. “Please don’t wake Sapphire. Not yet. Please let’s try this?”

“Here,” said Addam. “How about this way?”

He pulled out of Brienne and rolled onto his back; he held his hands out to her, inviting her to mount him. She grinned and swung one of her immensely long legs over his body. Jaime was treated to the very explicit sight of Brienne sliding back onto his bannerman’s cock.

“And then Jaime from behind?” Brienne asked.

“Yes,” Addam looked at Jaime from over Brienne’s shoulder. Spread his legs so Jaime could kneel between them. “Jaime from behind.”

Jaime frowned; he was not all that steady on his knees as a rule, but he supposed it couldn't hurt to try. For Brienne.

At least this way he could see what he was doing.

He knelt behind the two of them. Hooked his stump about Brienne’s waist to steady himself and positioned his cock with his hand.

“You think you can do it?” she asked.

Jaime shrugged. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

“Come here.” Brienne lifted her hips a little, arching herself so that only the very tip of Addam’s cock was inside her.

Jaime moved closer, the head of his cock nestled into her wetness beside Addam’s. It was a strange sensation - Addam’s eyes went wide.

So did Jaime’s – he’d never had his cock deliberately pressed against another man’s before. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it. Still, it was only Addam. No doubt they would be laughing about this over ale later.

Slowly, slowly, Brienne pressed back towards Jaime, her breathing slow and steady and calm as she sank gently back and down. Inch by agonising inch; it felt like it took her forever to take them. But take them she did.

“Oh … gods,” she choked. “That feels …”

She grabbed Jaime’s stump and clasped it to her hip. Shuddering between him and Addam.

The whole thing felt quite precarious to Jaime – one slip, one catch, and he felt sure he or Addam or both would slip out again. If they were to thrust, they would have to do so in near-perfect unison if they were to stay inside her. It was hard enough to organise who got what pillows at night – Jaime didn’t have a lot of hope for _this_.

But Brienne … it seemed to have driven Brienne to a state of ecstasy already.

Her head tipped forward, and she made small, choked noises as she rolled her hips, and _gods_ , she was stunning like this. The very picture of wanton sexuality.

“How does it feel?” Addam asked in a whisper. His eyes glittered to see her so turned on, too. “No pain?”

“Ohhhh,” was all she could say.

Jaime and Addam grinned at each other over Brienne’s shoulder.

She clung to Jaime’s stump, her other hand entwined with Addam’s, fingers laced. Jaime held one of her thighs, mostly to steady himself as she began to move on them in earnest.

Oh gods, it felt so strange and so good! As she arched her hips, Jaime was caught and rubbed and slid against not only the inside of her cunt, but Addam’s cock as well. His own cock surged with pleasure so strong and so throbbingly intense that he had to fight for his control.

On his chest, the mark of the tree throbbed in rhythm with his cock, filling him with that feeling he could only describe as _power_. The feeling that had a nameless purpose, the power he knew he would need.

Brienne moaned even louder now, seemingly forgetting her request that they be quiet so as not to wake Sapphire. He could see the tree’s mark on her arms, too, and it climbed up Addam’s almost to the elbows as they all rocked together, clinging to each other.

Yes. Yes … together. _Together_. This was how it was meant to be.

The mark took his pleasure throughout his body, made him ring like a bell with it. He could feel it burst like blossom through his skin, like rich and warm spring sunshine, crashing through him like lightning.

He yanked himself out of her – gods, he was coming! And so was Brienne, her head thrown back over his shoulder, crying her pleasure to the sky. And so was Addam, his eyes screwed shut and his cock spurting his seed on his belly. His hands clenched in the sheets.

All three of them. All coming at once. That had never happened before, not even close.

“Gods …” Brienne panted. On her hands and knees, hunched over Addam.

“I’d say we are!” Addam smirked.

Jaime burst out laughing. Brienne swatted Addam on the arm. Leaned over to kiss him and then back to kiss Jaime.

“Thank you both,” she whispered. Her voice throaty and thick and half a whisper. “that was indescribably good.”

She clambered back over Addam and got to her feet beside the bed. Grabbed a towel to wipe Jaime’s seed from her back and passed it to Addam to clean his own up.

Jaime collapsed onto the pillows beside Addam, breathing hard, his knees still trembling.

“Having trouble keeping up, old man?” Addam teased him.

Jaime nodded – he had no shame, any fool could see his body was not what it used to be. The other two were well-muscled and fit from their time in the yard; the most exercise Jaime got was hobbling about after Sapphire.

Brienne laughed. “We’ll soon get you fit again,” she said with a lascivious grin.

Gods, she looked all but divine, blotchy and red though she was, sweaty and wild-haired and well-used. She was at the washbowl; both he and Addam watched as she scrubbed herself with the washcloth – under her arms, under her breasts, between her legs. Wet her hair and brushed it back.

There was nothing feminine about her washbowl ritual – it was pretty much what every man Jaime had ever seen do his ablutions did. There was no perfume, no styling, no prettying. No mystique about it at all. Yet he and Addam were all but panting.

She pulled a pair of leather breeches on. Went to her drawers to find a tunic. Caught them staring.

“What?” she asked. Checking the mirror to make sure she didn’t have something stuck to her face.

“Nothing,” said Addam with a besotted, lackwit grin on his face.

“Then why are you staring?”

“Because we love you,” Jaime said with what he was sure was an equally stupid look. “And we love watching you.”

“Oh,” Brienne went quite red. She was strangely flustered for a woman who had waited naked in a helm and cape last night. “Th – thank you.”

She found a light tunic and threw it over her head. Left it unlaced, so the shape of her breast could be seen through the fabric. She lifted the curtain on the bedroom window, just as the bell rang for breakfast. “Ah, good,” she said. “I’m hungry.”

Addam and Jaime looked at each other and laughed.

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, you’ve both made me hungry. Riding two cocks at once is tough, stomach-emptying work.”

Addam dragged himself from the bed with a groan, stretching enough that his back made a popping sound. Jaime scrambled for his cane – his knees ached so much he didn’t dare trust his feet.

“What about our little nameday knight?” Addam asked, peering into the cot at the snoring form of Sapphire.

Brienne made a face. “Why is it always this way? She’s awake half the night and then she sleeps when it’s time to break her fast.”

“Perhaps we should wake her?” suggested Jaime. “There was to be bacon today – we don’t want to miss bacon.”

Brack and Marcyn, Dyanne and Sophey had been raising some pigs in the keep’s pig yard and one had been slaughtered a week past, the belly curing in the kitchen larder ready for today, making Jaime’s mouth water whenever he’d passed it.

Brienne nodded. “Let’s change the bed sheets and get ready ourselves. If she’s not awake by then, we’ll rouse her.”

In the end, they did not need to wake her. Addam, still half asleep, managed to knock a breastplate off the wall while dressing, the clatter of which caused her to start awake and start crying. Not the most auspicious start to her first nameday.

Addam, full of apologies, went to comfort her while Jaime found her clothes and a napkin and Brienne put the fresh sheets on the bed.

It was quite late by the time they got to breakfast – Sapphire had, of course, soiled her napkin just as they were about to leave, and was still tired and grizzling as they finally left the White Sword Tower.

Sadly, they had miss the bacon. Jaime cursed when he saw the empty tray.

But there was still plenty of porridge and jam and breakfast bread and even some hard-boiled eggs, which were a favourite of Addam’s, Jaime knew. Addam set about filling plates for them while Jaime fetched tea. It had become their ritual of late.

Brienne sat down at a table to give the crotchety Sapphire some milk and was immediately surrounded by people wanting to wish the babe good fortune on her nameday. Nira and Alara, Brack, Marcyn … the two sailors from the Summer Isles who had some lovely toys as gifts. A queue behind them, too.

Everyone here loved a nameday.

Nira had sewn Sapphire a pretty little bonnet and a bright blue pinafore, just right for the spring weather. Alara had made a cake, a spiced honey cake that she said had been her favourite as a child.

By the time Addam got to the table, Dyanne and Sophey were there too. Dyanne had made Sapphire a little wooden sword and shield, emblazoned with a painted picture of a sapphire. Sophey, it seemed, was quite the artist.

Brienne thanked everyone profusely – she was quite moved by the attention Sapphire got, even if the babe herself was in a foul mood and cared little for her gifts. She wailed and screamed and buried her face in her mother’s breast when anyone spoke to her.

Jaime squeezed through the gathering just as Brienne was recounting Sapphire’s birth to Marcyn. She’d just passed the point with all the pain and blood and the part where she’d crushed Podrick’s hand.

“She came into the world just as the city bells rang for midday,” Brienne said.

“Oh, how lovely,” Marcyn cooed, running a finger down Sapphire’s cheek.

Brienne smiled, but her smile was thin. Her eyes were distant. “It was a shock,” she said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do with a babe. How I was going to care for her or put food in her mouth.”

Jaime hung his head – bitterly regretful. He still had Lord Jaime’s memories of Joanna’s birth at the Last Hearth – it had been the happiest day of Brienne’s life. He remembered her crying with joy to hold their child; he remembered how they had sat in their chamber for hours after, just gazing at her, marvelling at the smallness of her fingers and her toes and her squashed little features, scarcely believing she was real. Really theirs.

He put a steaming cup of moon tea in front of Brienne and offered her a sad smile. She nodded but looked away without returning his smile.

Alara looked at the moon tea, then at Jaime. Then at Addam, who was sitting with one arm around the back of Brienne’s chair, trying to interest Sapphire in a spoonful of porridge.

“Nira said you hadn’t been in your room much.”

“I’ve been … helping,” Jaime said. “Sapphire –”

“Sapphire, is it?”

“She’s not been sleeping well. She –”

“I would expect Ser has been keeping her awake with all that screaming.”

Jaime made a face. “Alara …”

Alara grinned. “It’s all right. I understand. I always thought Ser was a two-man job.”

Jaime spluttered. “I … she … I mean we … It’s not like that.”

“Yes, it is. Everyone knows.”

“They do?”

“Of course they do. You’re suddenly roped to her side all the time grinning like some lackwit. Ser Ginger too.”

“Oh.”

“So long as she’s happy. So long as you’re not going to break her heart again.”

“Of course not!” he hissed.

“Hmm,” said Alara with a raised eyebrow. “There’s not much ‘of course’ about it. Once you’ve broken a woman’s trust …”

“I won’t,” he said. “This … this is my family.”

Alara looked at him for a long moment. Nodded once. Then she turned back to Sapphire and kissed her little hand. “Happy nameday, little Ser.”

The encounter left Jaime a little winded. He couldn’t seem to meet anyone’s eye as they wished Sapphire well and then slowly dispersed to get back to their own plates.

Everybody knew, did they?

He supposed they hadn’t been too discreet – he’d spent every night with Addam and Brienne, come to breakfast with them in the mornings, eaten dinner with them also. And yes, he had been happier. Much happier. Noticeably happier.

He looked at Brienne and Addam now – Addam was pretending his spoon was a galloping horse, making the noise of thundering hooves as he sped it towards Sapphire’s mouth. Telling her to open the stable door and then depositing her porridge into her mouth.

Brienne sipped her moon tea, laughing at Addam as he gave a very exaggerated whinny. Sapphire giggled heartily, spitting out most of the porridge he had just managed to get into her mouth.

Jaime smiled – he couldn’t help it. This _was_ his family. Three knights and a bastard babe – it didn’t much look like other men’s families, he supposed, but when had Jaime ever been like other men?

Fuck it.

He put his stumped arm around the familiar warmth of Brienne’s back. Leaned in to kiss her neck. She turned to him with wide eyes, but he just shrugged and sipped his own tea. What did they have to fear? It wasn’t like they were related.

Besides, Alara was right. Brienne _was_ a two-man job.

The handmaid had meant it crudely, of course, but Jaime’s feelings for Brienne were immense. Overwhelming. He’d never been able to control them, they’d made him do stupid things – desperate, panicked, terrified things. He’d ruined both their lives because he hadn’t been able to handle them. Sapphire’s, too.

Addam in the mix made sense, did he not? Going into battle against an enemy who was too much, a man needed a bannerman by his side. Why was love any different?

Love …

Jaime was so full of love. The love of everyone in this room, everyone in the city. It coursed through him, a river and a hurricane, and he wanted to give it to Brienne. Wrap her and Addam and Sapphire in everything he was, have that be a good thing, a noble thing, a thing without …

A thing without Cersei.

Gods, there it was. That was his shame—still his shame.

The shame he didn’t want to bring to Brienne and Addam, that he didn’t want to bring into Sapphire’s life. What would she think the first time she heard the words “sister-fucker” slung at her father? What questions would she ask, and how in the world could he answer them?

How could he explain that he had once loved his sister?

He hadn’t, though. The feelings he’d had for Cersei were … well, they were what everyone thought they were—an abomination.

Brother and sister or not, it had not been love. He had seen love for himself now, and it was calm; it was caring. Love was hopeful and sweet. Love was what Jaime felt here, emanating from all these people. It was what he felt when he was with Brienne and Addam. When they shared laughter or shared a meal. When they took care of Sapphire together, when they washed pots and changed bedsheets. When they kissed goodnight and fell asleep, he and Addam holding Brienne.

Love was not about beauty or power, or the exchange of sex for violence. It wasn’t clinging to each other, convincing yourselves that you were the only people who mattered. It wasn’t making children from spite, or waiting for crumbs of affection for years on end, in thrumming, pounding misery.

Gods, he thought, looking at Brienne and Addam and Sapphire. How could he bring _that_ to them? How could he bring the man who had believed Cersei worthy of love?

Jaime groped for his cane. Stood up, even as Ellion came over with a little wrapped gift for Sapphire.

Brienne looked up at Jaime even as she thanked Ellion.

Jaime plastered a smile onto his face. Leaned down to kiss her. “I’ll be back soon, I – I just have something to do.”

“Very well,” she said, her face puzzled. He hadn’t so much as touched his breakfast, he realised. He limped away on his cane, ignoring Addam call his name.

Jaime left the Queen’s Ballroom. Headed for the stairs. Not the main staircase, not the one he used when he was a Kingsguard, but the servants’ one, the small, echoing, winding one that took him to the map room. He could hold on better to the rails there with his stump.

The map itself was still cracked – a legacy of the day Daenerys Targaryen had burned the city. The day he’d tried to die in Cersei’s arms. But it was clean now, and now there were rows of boots laid out from Winterfell to Dorne, for young Dorrick to polish.

Jaime limped past them. Limped past the place where he had met Cersei, after his fight with Euron Greyjoy. Past the place where she had ordered the Mountain to kill him, where he had told her that he didn’t believe her. Heading for the solar.

This room had been his father’s. It had been his father’s, and then it had been Cersei’s. Jaime knew it would have been Tyrion’s. Tyrion would have wanted it, the way he wanted Casterly Rock – he would have wanted it while hating himself for wanting it.

Jaime did not know if Bran the Broken had appointed another Hand after he’d had Tyrion executed, but somehow, he suspected not. Things had been shifting, even then.

This room still smelled like Tyrion. Like hair oil and rings on his fingers. Like wine and cunning.

Jaime sat down at the desk, his fingers trembling as he pulled the drawers open. It was filled with parchments. Books and ledgers and journals and records.

He pulled them out, one at a time. Putting them on the desk.

Gods. There were many. Dozens, just in Tyrion’s drawers alone. How was he going to do this? He had no clue where to start. His reading wasn’t brilliant, either – he was looking at months and months of work here.

“Jaime?”

Her voice echoed through the map room, soft and strong all at once.

“Brienne?”

Then she was at the door, peering into the dark solar, her eyes wide and worried.

Addam came in behind her, Sapphire sat on his shoulders. They had followed him. Of course they had.

“Are you all right?” Brienne asked. She came towards him, wrapping herself in her arms. It was cold in here, with no fire lit, but he knew she could feel this place did not feel friendly. It felt like Lannisters.

He nodded. Tried to smile, but his face wouldn’t work.

“What are you doing?” she asked. Her voice was small, her face luminous in the low light. She looked at all the books and papers on the desk. “What is all this?”

“Tyrion’s things,” Jaime answered. “Accounts maybe? Some journals, I think. Lots of paperwork.”

Her eyes drifted over it all. “Why?”

He hesitated. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

She stiffened. “Will it hurt me?”

It took a long time for Jaime to answer. “Maybe.”

Addam came to stand at her shoulder. “What’s the matter, Jaime?”

“Cersei,” Jaime said. He sighed. “Of course.”

“What of her?” Addam asked. Sapphire reached over his head for her father.

“I don’t want her here,” he said. The thought tumbled from his mouth half-formed. “I would not have her in my head, I would not have her between us, I would not bring her into our bed.”

“Do you?” Brienne asked. “Do you think of her when we are abed?”

“No!” Jaime exclaimed. “Truly not. I have no feelings for her, aside from pity and contempt. She could no more arouse me than Sunchaser. I swear it.”

“Then what are you raving about?” asked Addam.

Jaime let out a long, slow sigh. Shook his head. “I don’t even know. I think I wanted to know what I will say when Sapphire inevitably hears that her father lay with his twin sister.”

“Oh,” said Addam. “And you think Tyrion had the answer?”

“She’s here somewhere. In the city, is she not? Buried with the bones of a commoner slain by Daenerys Targaryen.”

Brienne nodded.

“That feels like a weight. She’s everywhere and nowhere – a ghost, almost. Everywhere I turn. I wondered if my brother had written down her location. That I might put that ghost to rest.”

“How?” asked Addam.

“I don’t know that, either. I know – tis foolish. Tell me it’s foolish. It just feels like the last thing I have to do.”

Addam sighed. So sad. He passed Sapphire to Brienne and picked up one of the books from the desk. “I’ll help,” he said softly. “If it will help you.”

Jaime looked up at Brienne. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “If it hurts you, either of you, I’ll stop, right now.”

She shook her head. Gave a grim smile. “You know, I think it might be good for all of us,” she said. “I think it might do us some good to go and piss on her grave.”

Jaime felt his jaw drop. He tilted his head and looked up at Brienne. “Well … all right. Whatever gets her out of your head!”

Addam laughed. Brienne did, too. And then they were all laughing, them again, three knights and a bastard child. _Them_.

Jaime loved them both intensely.

Addam held a book out to Brienne, but she shook her head. “We don’t need those,” she said.

“We don’t?” asked Addam, puzzled.

“I know where she is. I thought Jaime was buried with her, remember? I had to know. Tyrion told me.”

Jaime gasped. “Where?”

“In a pauper’s cemetery – in Flea Bottom. Near … near the Sept.”

Jaime’s eyes went wide. “Truly? That ramshackle, rat-infested Sept? That’s where he buried me? That … that vindictive little cunt!”

Addam looked at him as though he’d quite lost his wits. “What? Jaime … Tyrion knew that wasn’t you, yes?”

“Yes! But – but … no one else did!”

“I don’t think anyone else much cared,” Brienne said softly. “The grave is unmarked.”

“You went there?” Jaime asked softly. The thought of her, weeping over his grave was _awful_.

“No,” she said. “What would the point have been? You were dead in the earth with the woman you loved. There was no place for me there.”

Oh, that hurt him. _Cut_ him. Stabbed him through the chest. He wanted to grab her. Hold her. Fall to his knees and tell her how sorry he was. But that was no good, he knew that. He just had to feel her pain.

She looked at him, her blue eyes intense and strong. Then she held out a hand. “Come on,” she said. “I think we both have some ghosts we need to quiet.”

They walked from the keep and through the city streets together, the three of them and Sapphire. Listening to the rattle of doors in the wind, watching the remnants of the dead city blow through the streets.

Flea Bottom was the worst of it. The smell had not gone here, that dank smell of shit and rot and misery that Jaime had always been taught was the smell of the peasantry.

He could imagine Tyrion’s glee at burying Cersei here. He just knew his brother had laughed for the rest of his days about that.

The cemetery was as foul as he had thought it would be. Grim and dark and dim and foreboding. It was also in serious disrepair. The walls surrounding it had been burned by dragonfire, the Sept had no roof, and the only tree here was a blackened, gnarled stump that had probably been befouled by rot long before Daenerys Targaryen had burned it to a crisp.

It felt strange here. Unquiet. Jaime could barely feel the love from his people up in the keep.

Cersei’s spirit was a beast in the wind, screaming and throwing itself against the walls. She would hate it here. She truly would.

“Here,” whispered Brienne. “Seventh row. Fourth plot.”

There were so many plots. So close together they might as well have been a mass grave. Daenerys had filled this place to the brim. They had to stand right on top.

Jaime looked at the patch of mud. Tried to associate it with his sister, with himself, with the man who should have died in Cersei’s arms. Tried to feel something other than empty.

He felt nothing—no great weight lifting from him, no closing of a door on his past. He supposed he had been a fool to think it would be so easy.

But then Brienne put an arm around him one side, and Addam the other. Both leaned on him in silence, while Sapphire chatted away in her nonsense language, her voice pretty as a peal of bells across this horrible place.

“Come on,” Jaime said with a smile after a moment. “This is no place to spend our babe’s first nameday.”

But as they turned to go, the air got cold. The stench grew stronger. Thick, oppressive. The wind was whispering voices and then … then it was growling wolves.

“Jaime …” whispered Brienne. “Look.”

There _were_ wolves. Padding into the cemetery gates. Enormous ones, as big as Robb Stark’s, with bared teeth and bright golden eyes. Their fur was thick and grey and soaking wet. Plastered against their huge bodies as if they had been swimming.

Brienne shoved Sapphire into Jaime’s arms. Drew her sword and stepped in front of him.

“Brienne?” asked Addam. “What? What’s happening?”

“Wolves!” Brienne hissed.

“What? Where?” His eyes were everywhere.

“You don’t see them?” asked Brienne.

“No.” But he’d drawn his sword too, stepped into stance with Brienne. Ready to fight something he couldn’t see.

“They’re here. Direwolves. Lots of them.”

Jaime wanted to speak but he couldn’t. He felt as though there was a hand on his throat, a hand choking all his air away—a cold hand, cold as the graves beneath his feet.

There was a knife in his belly too. Again. Again. Again. Stabbing. Again. Again. Again.

He had to get Sapphire away from here, he had to make Brienne understand!

This was not right. The streets were not right, they were not how they were. Jaime realised he had made a mistake. He was too far from the tree … too far from the powerful love of his people ….

Suddenly there was a cacophony of screams, of shouting, the clang of steel and the rumble of falling masonry. The smell of fire.

A figure walked towards them – a small figure, thin and lithe. Covered in blood and brickdust, dressed in brown leather. The direwolves parted.

Her eyes were blind and sightless, her belly a torn bloody mess of stab wounds. Around her neck, burn marks in the shape of a hand. She flipped a dagger in her hand, again and again. Walked towards them.

“Oh gods,” Brienne breathed in front of him. “That’s Arya Stark.”

“Arya Stark?!” Addam exclaimed. He peered right at her with eyes that clearly couldn’t see her.

Jaime himself had barely recognised her. She was a wraith of blood and fear. Terrifying.

“Arya?” Brienne called. “Arya, stop this. We have a child here, a babe.”

Arya kept walking. Brienne stepped forward, her sword before her.

“Arya, stop! I have no wish to kill you.”

“You won’t kill me. I’m not here,” said Arya.

“What? Where are you?” Brienne asked.

“I’m close. As close as death.” She walked around them, slowly. Brienne circled with her, sword point pointed at her. “I’m as close as Joffrey. As Cersei. Walder Frey. Meryn Trant. Tywin Lannister. The Red Woman. Beric Dondarrion. Thoros of Myr. Ilyn Payne. The Mountain.”

As she spoke, her face changed, becoming each of those people in turn. Jaime stood, paralysed. Strangled. Stabbed in the guts.

“I’m burning,” she whispered. “Drowning. Hanging. Starving. Stabbing. I’m burning the thing that hasn’t burned for centuries. I’m lost in the mists. I’m waiting in the rain. I’m the thief of love – the valonqar. I’ll cast you down and take everything you hold dear.”

She turned around, walking away from them as she spoke. She fingered something, something that hung on her belt as long as a sword, black and shiny and curved like a talon. “I found something. Something gone and lost. I found it, and I’m strong now. Strong enough to make a new list of those who hurt my family.”

“Jaime. Brienne. Addam Marbrand. Sapphire Storm. I’ll see you soon. I’ll see you on the sea. I’ll see you in the river where you will kiss Nymeria before you die.”

There was a crash like waves, and Arya was gone. They were in the cemetery in Flea Bottom, all together, standing on Cersei’s grave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who left me a comment last week, sorry I didn't get a chance to reply to everyone. I hope to do better this week. Thanks so much for all the lovely messages of support and the cheers for the threesome. I knew it would be controversial, but I'm hoping that it pays off.
> 
> Thanks again to CaptainTarthister for reading and helping and advising. And to the lovely TimetravelingArcheologist for her help with the nitty-gritty. I'm a lucky woman.
> 
> I hope that you will check out the wonderful [Us Without Each Other playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/32FUnK5tIi3Hqu9rTvjeok)! It's compiled and updated by a lovely reader who I am super grateful to. 
> 
> If you'd like to get some teasers and updates on forthcoming chapters, then please do consider following me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/). Come and say hi, I do like to chat!


	7. I Will Not Flinch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She sat down on a rock, took out her sword, and began to hone its edge. I will remember, and I pray I will not flinch."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Banner by the lovely [@WakingDreams82](https://twitter.com/WakingDreams82) on Twitter.

“Tell me about Arya Stark.” Addam’s voice was calm and steady as they walked back through the gates of the keep. He had Sapphire in his arms. Holding her tight.

Brienne supported Jaime, who sagged weakly against her side. He was white as a sheet, and his limp seemed twice as bad. He couldn’t seem to coordinate his feet and his cane.

“What of her?” Brienne grunted. Catching Jaime as he stumbled over a divot in the mud.

“She’s Bran’s … sister?”

Brienne nodded.

“And she has the powers he did?”

“No. Well, I don’t …”

“Which? What?”

“She’s … a formidable fighter. Trained in Braavosi water dancing. And a student of the House of Black and White.”

“What, like a Faceless Man? A Faceless _Woman_?”

“Yes. Exactly that.”

“Fuck.” Addam fell silent then, looking quite pale himself. He looked around at the people wandering through the yard. The cooks chatting outside the kitchen keep, the women wandering around with bundles of washing. Dyanne and Sophey in the pigpen. The two fishermen sweeping the yard.

“So she could be here. She could be here right now. She could be anybody?”

“No,” said Jaime. “She’s not here. I – I’d know.”

Then he had a fit.

It happened so suddenly that Brienne all but dropped him. He said nothing – just went stiff as a board in her arms and fell backwards, almost quicker than she could react. By the time she had borne him to the ground, he was trembling violently.

The people in the yard came running, crowding around Jaime as he lay on the floor. Brienne yelled at them to stand back, yanking her swordbelt off to jam between his teeth. Sapphire started to cry; Addam rocked her and shushed her.

But the people did not move away when Brienne shouted. Quite the opposite, they stepped closer, almost as one.

And then their voices rose through the soft spring air, that same lulling, gentle song they sung when Jaime communed with the tree. They all joined hands as Jaime convulsed in Brienne’s arms.

Then, just as suddenly as it started, Jaime’s fit stopped. He stopped trembling and opened his eyes. Wide.

Usually, after a fit, Jaime looked disoriented. Lost. Exhausted.

But he got to his feet, found his cane but stood without needing to lean on it. Leaving Brienne on her arse in the mud.

“Th – thank you,” he stammered.

“Jaime?” asked Addam. His eyes went to Brienne’s.

Jaime didn’t reply. He walked off, hardly limping at all. The crowd dispersed without a word. Sapphire was still crying, so Brienne took her in her arms.

She and Addam followed Jaime, hanging back a little.

“What just happened?” Addam asked. “Did they … did he …? Did they _heal_ him?”

“I don’t know.”

Beneath her sleeves, Brienne felt her inner forearms throb slightly. A pleasurable ripple that snaked halfway to her elbow. She knew that the mark of the tree was on her – that was how it felt.

She noticed Addam clench his hands, too.

They looked at each other, and then back at Jaime as he crossed the drawbridge over the dry moat into Maegor’s Holdfast. They followed him up the stairs in silence, hanging back as he mounted each step slowly. His cane, followed by his right leg and then his left; his stumped right arm hooked over the handrail. His hair flopped over his face.

He went into the King’s bedchambers, pulling off his muddy clothes as soon as he crossed the threshold. Brienne and Addam followed. Brienne closed the door.

“How would you know?” asked Addam.

Brienne set Sapphire down on her feet, and she ran to her toy box, though most of its contents were already strewn about the floor. She ran back to Brienne with her drum in one hand, plonked herself down on her mother’s knee to bang it.

“What?” asked Jaime as he emerged from the bottom end of his tunic, his hair wild from passing backwards through his clothes.

Addam sat down on the chaise, raising his voice over Sapphire’s din. “If Arya Stark were here. Among us, wearing someone else’s face. How would you know?”

“Perhaps I could feel her? Her love, if she is capable of such.” Jaime unlaced his breeches and let them drop down his scarred legs.

“Only perhaps?”

Jaime turned around to throw his clothes at his already-overflowing washbasket. The mark of the tree sat proud on his chest, dark and throbbing just a little, like a main vein. Brienne felt her eyes drawn to it, even as her own marks pulsated in tandem. Pulling them together, the three of them. Binding them somehow.

“I don’t know, do I?” Jaime sighed. He sounded exhausted. Heartsick. “Truly, I don’t. What do the Faceless Men do, exactly, when they change faces? Do they also adopt a person’s thoughts? Their emotions? Could they fool me? It’s certainly a possibility.”

Addam stood up again. Paced the floor as Jaime pulled a new tunic on, a white one with delicate blossoms embroidered on the chest.

“This is the evil we’re supposed to fight together?” Brienne asked. “Arya?”

“What is she like?” Addam asked Brienne. “As a person? As a fighter?”

“A child. A traumatised child, beneath a façade of swaggering and cockiness. She’s a skilled fighter of sorts, but … against three knights? Us? I doubt she could win in a fair fight.”

But it wasn’t a fair fight which worried Brienne. It was the face changing. The visions. That thing Arya had worn on her belt, that curved, polished black talon that was long as a sword. Even the memory of it made her feel cold.

Jaime groaned. “Gods. A traumatised child.”

“She killed the Freys,” Brienne reminded him. “Without compunction. All of them – the whole House.”

“Yes, but …”

“She fed Lord Walder his eldest sons in a pie.”

“Gods!” Addam blanched. “You mean … butchered them? Cooked them? Herself?”

“So far as I know.”

“Gods,” he said again. “That’s not an enemy we wished to have made.”

“I know,” Brienne said. She looked at Jaime, though. Jaime did not look right at all.

“What are we to do?” he asked. If he’d had two hands, Brienne suspected he would have been wringing them.

“It’s quite simple!” Addam cried. “Kill her. If you feel her within a mile of the city – anywhere. Kill her straight away. Crush her with a tree as you did her brother.”

Jaime chewed his lip. He didn’t respond.

“Jaime … she threatened Sapphire.”

“I know she did.”

“Then there’s no question,” Addam said. “Traumatised child or no. What of _your_ child? _Our_ child? Sapphire is … you wish to eat her in a pie?”

Jaime looked up at Addam, his mouth open, his eyes horrified. “No! Of course not! I –”

As if she knew they spoke of her, Sapphire toddled over from her mother to her father, her drum still in her hand. Held it up to him and babbled as if she were telling him something vitally important about her toy. Jaime pulled her into his arms and squeezed her. Pressed soft kisses all over her curls. He looked so very, very sad.

“We need to think about this,” Brienne said. She shook her head at Addam, silently telling him to give Jaime a little time.

“Perhaps you should get some sleep?” Addam said with a sigh. “You just had a fit, and … you don’t look well. Perhaps you will see things more clearly once you are rested.”

Jaime nodded. “None of us slept well last night, thanks to Sapphire.”

“She could probably do with a nap, too,” Brienne said, noticing how Sapphire snuggled to Jaime’s chest as he rocked her, her thumb slipping into her mouth. Her little drum was all but forgotten.

The babe held her arms up eagerly for Brienne, and tugged at her tunic when she was picked up in her arms. Brienne lounged on the chaise to feed her, while Addam closed the shutters and Jaime curled up in his bed. Despite the warmth of the day, he wrapped himself tight in the blankets.

He tossed and turned as he always did, though – he had been a restless sleeper even at Winterfell, and Brienne had noticed this had become worse since his injuries. Even in a king’s feather bed, he clearly found it difficult to get comfortable, to find a position that he wouldn’t wake up sore from.

Sapphire, on the other hand, fell asleep much more easily. She drank from Brienne’s breast for only a few minutes before her eyes grew heavy and her suckling soft and sporadic. If only she’d done that last night.

Brienne watched her in the muted midday light, realising that it was almost a year to the moment since her daughter came into this world. A year to the moment since she was pulled from her body in that dingy billet in King’s Landing – a real, whole, live, screaming little human being. Brienne remembered the shock of her, the hot wet blood of her body as the woods witch threw her onto Brienne’s belly like a fish she’d just landed.

Sapphire had been shocking, and terrifying … and nothing Brienne had been prepared for. But she had been perfect—a source of strength, and a source of dignity, too. Birthing the Kingslayer’s bastard had been supposed to make Brienne shrink in shame, but instead Sapphire had swelled her with pride.

No Lord she had ever served, no Lady she had ever sworn an oath to had ever given Brienne purpose like Sapphire had.

It seemed strange now that all she had wanted was to die for a Lord she believed in. Building herself the best and most honourable death for the best and most honourable person seemed so … morbid. So innocent, too, so naïve and foolish. Having _life_ as a purpose, a life filled with little blue-eyed smiles and giggles, little fingers exploring toys, a little soft cheek pillowed against her warm breast … warm breath, warm skin, the soft sweet scent of her _child_ … _her_ child! _That_ was a life to fight for.

She turned to see Addam watching her as he poured himself a glass of Jaime’s wine. He held up another glass with a raised eyebrow – asking her if she wanted one too, but she shook her head.

She stood with Sapphire, rocked her a little to make sure she was fully asleep before putting her down in the bed beside Jaime. Propping a pillow on the other side of her.

Jaime opened his eyes to see Sapphire and smiled up at Brienne before snuggling further under his blankets and falling back to sleep. He looked almost childlike too, a mass of pretty golden curls emerging from a heap of blankets that he was using to hide from the world.

As she watched, he slipped his thumb in his mouth, too.

Brienne sighed and sat back down on the chaise. She kicked her boots off. Stretched her feet.

“Are _you_ tired?” Addam asked.

Brienne shrugged. Lay her head back on the cushion behind her. “Maybe. I might have gone beyond tired now. I’m not sure what I feel.”

“Hmm,” Addam said. He perched on the end of the chaise, lifting Brienne’s feet and putting them on his lap. “I’m a little concerned about that, actually.”

Brienne sat up. “What?”

“About us. About you not knowing what you feel.”

“I don’t mean about –” she gestured with her hands, indicating herself, Addam and Jaime.

“No, I know. But …” He lifted an arm to unlace his shirt cuff. Pulled it open to show the mark of the tree on his forearm. “Are we ever going to talk about _this_?”

Brienne let out a slow breath. They _hadn’t_ talked about it, had they? The marks had appeared that first night, as they lay together after … well, after lying together as a three. And … they had never talked about it. It had blended into the background as though they had just accepted it as normal.

“That thing … that tree. It’s marked us. It’s _inside_ us. Does it not frighten you?” Addam asked. “Even a little?”

“I – I don’t know.”

He nodded. “I can see that. And _that_ frightens me.”

Whatever magic worked here, the magic that worked through Jaime, the magic that came from the tree, Addam was largely immune to it. He had not seen the vision of Arya in the Flea Bottom graveyard earlier, nor did he feel that strange _pull_ that Brienne did.

“It doesn’t control me,” she said.

“How can you be certain?”

Brienne chewed her lip. “I suppose I can’t be. Not truly. But I don’t think anybody here is controlled. Not Jaime, not any of these people. Do you?”

“No,” he said after a moment. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on here most of the time, but … these seem like normal, rational people for the most part. Kind. Community spirited. I’ve never felt as though we were in danger.”

“Nor have I.”

“Then what … what does it do? The tree. What does it want? Jaime’s people … they healed him, didn’t they? When he had his fit. Their singing stopped it somehow.”

Brienne nodded. “It looked that way.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

“Could you do it?”

“I don’t think so. That singing … I don’t know what it is. For me, the tree … it prioritises things. Feelings. That’s the best way I can describe it. So … being with you, and Jaime, feels very important. The marks on my wrist, not so important.”

“It stops you thinking about things?”

“It suppresses my inhibitions, perhaps? Perhaps a little like being drunk? No – maybe not drunk. You can be foolish when you’re drunk. Unless … do you think what we’ve done is foolish?”

“This?” Addam asked. “Us? The three of us?”

“Yes.”

“I … no. I don’t. It is strange, there is no getting away from that. But not unprecedented – Aegon the Conqueror had two wives, did he not? Why should you not have two husbands?”

Brienne laughed. “Is that what you are? My two husbands?”

Addam smiled too. “We raise a child together, do we not? The three of us. Rule a kingdom together, of sorts. We eat together, sleep together, spend our time together, all of it. We may not have exchanged cloaks, yet I would say we’re your husbands.”

“And to think my father despaired of ever finding me a match. A year disowned and I have found myself _two_!”

Addam leaned over so that he might press a kiss to her mouth. “And the most important thing … we both love you very much.”

Brienne grinned. Kissed him again, and again. Again, deeper, sliding her tongue over his. Her hand coming up to stroke into his beautiful copper beard. Fingers slipping into his hair. His eyes were dark when they broke that kiss, his lips moist. She caressed his cheek with her thumb.

“I love you, too,” she whispered.

Two husbands …

As much as she did not wish to exchange cloaks with either of them, Brienne wanted very much to have them both in her bed. It had been … incredible. Intense. Decadent. Like nothing she thought she would ever experience.

How it would work in the days to come, outside of this city, outside of this situation, she did not know. But here and now … yes. Oh, yes. It felt like it was where they were supposed to be.

Addam’s hands slipped into hers, their fingers interlacing, the black, throbbing marks on their wrists pressed together. They kissed until he moaned. Let go of one of her hands to slide his beneath her tunic.

Brienne burrowed one hand into the front of his breeches without bothering to unlace them. Tugged his stiffening cock until it was full and hard.

He was mad with lust already – Brienne loved the way that happened to men. In the blink of an eye, they went from rational conversation to panting, growling, grasping beasts. Not that she was much better – his hands lit trails of fire on her skin, made her throb between her legs with wet want.

He rolled on the chaise and pulled her atop him, though there was barely enough width in the thing to straddle him. Instead, she hauled him upright to sit astride him that way, her hand still busy down the front of his breeches.

Her wrist was cramping, sore from where the laces dug in, so she pulled them open to let his manhood spring free. The thing looked _delicious_ , flushed quite red with a little bead of moisture sitting at the top. Brienne slithered to her knees in front of the chaise to devour it.

Just as she leaned over his lap, Jaime sat up in the bed. He stared at the two of them, blinking.

“Did we wake you?” asked Addam.

Jaime nodded. “I could feel you.”

“Sorry,” Brienne said. She held a hand out to him. “Do you want to join?”

Jaime stared at them for a moment, long enough to make Brienne feel strangely exposed. She wanted to do up her tunic. To have Addam relace his breeches.

“No,” Jaime said. “No, I think I should visit the throne room.”

“The tree?” Addam asked.

Jaime nodded. Still staring at them. He groped for his cane and got out of bed. Shrugged a jacket on. He looked pale and drawn – even more tired than he had looked before he slept.

“Will you be all right?” Brienne asked.

“Of course.”

Brienne wasn’t so sure – if he were to have another fit on the stairs …

But it was too late. Jaime had already gone, the sound of his cane on the flagstones echoing down the corridor.

“What’s the matter with him?” Addam asked.

Brienne sat back with her bottom on her feet. “I think I may have some idea.”

Addam sighed. Sat back on the chaise. “Go,” he said, after a moment.

“Truly?” She looked at his cock, still huge and red in front of her.

“Of course. You can’t leave Jaime like that.”

“I don’t want to leave _you_ like _that_.”

He arched an eyebrow. Gave Brienne a devilish smirk. “Leave me your smallclothes?”

“What? Why?”

“Go on,” he urged.

She laughed, but she got up to unlace her breeches and shoved her smallclothes down with them. Stepped out of it all and then passed the undergarments to Addam. He picked them up and held her eyes as he lasciviously inhaled her scent from them.

Brienne felt her face _burn_. She scrambled back into her breeches. “Truly?”

“Gods, yes.” He wrapped a hand around his cock even as he buried his nose in them again.

“You are …”

“What?” he asked, still grinning. “I’d ask if I was the most perverted of your husbands, but the other one fucked his sister, so …”

Brienne could not help but laugh. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Husband.”

She still had a smirk on her face as she left the room, hurrying through the corridors and down the stairwells. The keep was busy – food was being brought to the ballroom on platters, Brienne spied loaves of bread and fresh river trout.

Most people seemed to be headed that way – it seemed as though Jaime had not gone to do whatever it was he did in the tree when he got naked and was embraced by it. Most people would follow him when he did that.

Indeed, she found him alone in the throne room, sitting on the tiled floor among the pillows and the petals beneath the tree’s huge branches. Staring up at the blue blossom as it drifted all around him.

He glanced back at her. Looked back to the tree.

Neither of them said anything for a long moment. Brienne went to Jaime’s side. Sat beside him, cross-legged on the floor.

“Kiss me?” he said, suddenly.

“Wh-what?”

He turned to her, his eyes leaf-green and full of the light spilling through the broken roof. “Kiss me. Would you?”

“Why?”

“Because you kissed me this morning. And last night, and you’ve kissed me every night for a fortnight.”

“That was …” Brienne trailed off, her last word echoing about the throne room.

They fell once more into silence, save the sound of the wind in the tree.

“It bothered you?” Brienne asked, after a moment. “Upstairs. Waking to me and Addam?”

“No,” Jaime said. Then “Yes.”

“That makes very little sense, you know. The things you have seen us do. The things you have done with us …”

“I’m not jealous.”

“Then what is it?”

“I’m sad.”

“Why?”

“This morning, we woke together. You and I. We kissed, and we made love, or we started to. And you woke Addam. But when I sleep, the two of you …”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

Silence again. Long and loud in the vaults of the roof.

Jaime sighed. “I thought we’d –”

“We haven’t.”

“But we –”

“I don’t know if we ever will.”

“Oh.” He swallowed.

“I love you,” she said, and the tree rippled. The marks on her arms throbbed. “I’ll never stop.”

“I love you, too. You know I do.”

“But loving you … it doesn’t feel safe.”

“Oh,” he said, again.

“It feels like you’ll swallow me up, eat me whole, take away everything I am and everything I’m proud of.”

“Gods …” he breathed. “So much? Is that how you felt when I left?”

“How did you think I’d feel? I’d … I’d vouched for you. Stood in front of a room full of lords and ladies and – and _Daenerys Targaryen_! Told them all you were a man of honour. Then I … I lay with you and … you …”

“Who cares what those people think?”

“Who cares? You made me look a fool! The butt of a great joke. Brienne the Beauty, poor ugly woman giving her maidenhead to a charming liar. How could Lady Sansa trust me with her life again, or my father with House Tarth after I’d been so foolish over a _Lannister_? You have no idea how _sorry_ everyone felt for me. How they’d all _known_ it would happen.”

“Brienne …”

“What?”

“I am more sorry –”

“Oh, shut up.”

He shut up. They sat in silence once again, Brienne’s heart thudding in her chest – fear and anger and outrage and humiliation, those same feelings always. Jaime dipped his fingers in a nearby bowl filled with perfumed water, making ripples. Watching them dissipate.

Brienne sighed. “Do you know what Renly said to me once?”

Jaime looked up from behind his hair. “What?”

“’Don’t let them see your tears,’ he said. ‘Nasty little shits aren’t worth crying over.’”

“And you …”

“And I cried over you. I cried so much, you have no idea …” She realised she was crying again now, her voice wavering, her chin wobbling. Her throat so painful she could barely speak. “I thought we could have been happy. I thought I could make you happy and you – you would rather throw your life away for that – that _monster_ than live with me.”

“No! No … Brienne, gods no … it wasn’t like that. That wasn’t it.”

He grabbed her. Pulled her into his arms and held her, harder than he’d ever held her. Stroking her neck. Kissing her hair. Letting her sob on his shoulder, breathing the scent of him and feeling the heat of him and just letting herself feel that pain.

She’d loved him so very, very much …

“Do you dream of battles?” Jaime asked her. “Battles you’ve been in, foes you fought, atrocities you’ve seen?”

Brienne lifted her head from his shoulder. Wiped her tears and her snot with the back of her hand and then put her arms back around him. Not wanting to let him go. “I dream about the dead sometimes. Knocking me off my feet – rushing over us in that crushing wave.”

Jaime nodded. “Me too. For years, I dreamed of Aerys, of choosing not to act. Of burning alive in his wildfire. Later of Pyke, then Whispering Wood. Of fighting you, sometimes. Daenerys Targaryen, burning my soldiers right in front of me, of that dragon coming over the horizon towards us. Riding towards it with a spear in my hand, looking right down its firey throat …”

“Scars …” Brienne whispered.

“Exactly.” His hand came up across her body. Stroked the line of her neck where her scars from the bear were. “Terrifying dreams, of things that might have been if I’d reacted differently, if I’d moved a little slower, if I hadn’t made the same choices. Those things are over now. All over. They can’t hurt us, but they hurt us still.”

Brienne nodded. His fingers were soft. Soothing. His hand smelled of the perfumed water.

“I suppose … in a way … that’s what I am for you. A scar. A bad dream. A memory of an enemy who once hurt you.”

“Yes.” Yes. She supposed he was.

“But I can’t hurt you now. I’m filled with love – a city’s worth.”

Brienne let out a little gasp of laughter. Pressed a kiss to the top of his head.

He looked up at her, his eyes wide and earnest. “And – and it’s for you. I think. You … and Addam, and Sapphire.”

“My … husbands?” she said with a smile.

Jaime was serious, though. “Yes. Husbands. That’s what we are – we’re a family, this was how it was always meant to be. This is why it all happened.”

Ah, Jaime and his sense of romantic destiny. It seemed that it was as strong as ever.

“All of this? All of this love is so we can kill Arya Stark?”

Jaime sighed. His brow creased again, his eyes downcast. His arms tightened around her. “Oh, Arya Stark,” he said. Almost a groan. “Do _you_ think I should crush her with a tree, as well?”

Brienne didn’t answer.

“Tell me, truthfully,” he begged. “Brienne, I need –”

“It’s Lady Catelyn, is it not?” Brienne asked softly from the cradle of his arms. “This is what bothers you?”

Jaime sighed. “We swore an oath, Brienne.”

“We did – me twice over. I was sworn to the Starks, lived in their home. I considered them family, for all it was worth.”

“Then you understand –”

“No.”

Jaime blinked.

“Oaths are semantics, Jaime. You of all people should know this.”

“Se – _semantics_?” he gaped at her.

“We made those vows to Lady Catelyn under different circumstances. Different times. Without knowing who her children were.”

“Her children are –”

“You killed Bran already, and if you hadn’t, I would have, without hesitation. Lady Catelyn may have thought him dead when we swore those oaths, but she would have wanted us to protect him no less than her daughters.”

“Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s not the oath itself. But … don’t you think I’ve done the Starks enough damage? Why is it me? Why does it _always_ fall to me?” He rocked back and forth now, though whether it was to soothe her or himself, Brienne couldn't tell. They couldn’t seem to let go of each other.

“Because you are a knight. And … and a good man, no matter how much you might protest it. Because we should not uphold oaths to people who are monsters, who kill whole cities or who threaten an innocent babe with murder.”

“No,” Jaime agreed. “But what if you’re partly responsible for making those monsters? What if you threw one of them from a tower window? Started a war that traumatised them so much they can butcher sons and feed them to their fathers in pies?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t _matter_?! Aerys was mad – an accident of fate and birth. But those Stark children are a product of my family’s sins. Sins I have since compounded by killing Bran.”

Brienne sighed. She sat up, breaking their embrace. Looked into his eyes and cupped one of his cheeks in her hand. “You had good reason to kill him. Do you regret it?”

“Yes,” Jaime said. “No. Regret is … a complicated thing. I regret that it was me, perhaps?”

“You were the only person who could have done it. Let’s not forget that, Jaime. There is more to this – far more – than you or I or Lady Catelyn could ever have predicted.” Her eyes went to the tree. “Something … _holy_ , perhaps.”

“Holy?!” asked Jaime, a ghost of a smirk on his lips. “You think I am doing the work of the gods here?”

“I don’t know. But this …” she nodded to the tree. Ran her fingers over his chest where his mark was, held up a hand to show him her own mark. “It’s _something_.”

“Maybe the old gods? The First Men … Bran told me he suspected I may be a greenseer of sorts.”

Brienne nodded. “Perhaps … perhaps that’s where the answer lies? Perhaps we should find out more, discover what might be going on here. It might help us decide what we have to do.”

Jaime grinned, looking a little sheepish. “I must confess I have never set foot in the library in all the years I have lived in this city. I would not know where to begin.”

“The new maester – have you met him? He must be a learned man, perhaps he can help?”

“Maester Quagg,” Jaime nodded. “He’s here with a woman old enough to be his mother. Ireyne something – they’ve been together since Old Town. We can ask.”

“Let’s do that. We need to know more of the facts I think. Work out how and what we can do.”

Jaime shifted his head, as if listening to something very faint. “He’s eating his midday meal in the ballroom. Fish? He’s enjoying it.”

“Trout,” Brienne said. “I saw them bringing it up from the kitchens.”

“Trout,” Jaime said with wonder. “Gods, I’m hungry.”

“We should eat, then. Talk to this Quagg while we do.”

But before they did, Brienne caught hold of Jaime's arm. Pressed him back to the pillows in front of the tree and kissed him, long and slow and soft and sweet.

Loving. Loving Jaime, as she always had.

It did not feel safe, but it did feel good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I did it! It's back! Thanks so much to so so many people who took the time to send me messages and wish me well after what happened. Honestly, there were SO MANY I was completely bowled over and I still can't believe how much this story meant to people. It's all of you that I have written this for, and I hope I've done your faith in me justice. 
> 
> Particular thanks go to my sister from another mister, CaptainTarthister, for her cheerleading and her fabulous advice on the work itself. She's a superstar.
> 
> At the moment, the plan is to alternate chapters of this with chapters of my [Hippie and the Hitchhiker series.](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1900624) So with all being well, the next update of this should be in two weeks. If you'd like to be kept up-to-date and get teasers etc, then as always come follow me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/).


	8. Go Away Inside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Let them do it, and go away inside."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Banner by the lovely [@WakingDreams82](https://twitter.com/WakingDreams82) on Twitter.

Jaime woke up at the bottom of a pile.

Brienne snored face down on top of him, her cheek pressed to his chest hair and arm curled over his belly. Addam was on top of her, sideways, his face nestled at the small of her back, his hand cupping her right arse cheek. His legs were entangled with Jaime’s.

To anyone who walked in right now, it would probably seem as though they had engaged in the most debauched acts imaginable the night before. The sheets were in disarray, pillows all over the bed, clothes on the floor.

But nothing of the sort had taken place – last night the three of them had eaten dinner in the Queen’s Ballroom. Taken a flagon of wine back to Jaime’s chamber and shared it in front of a roaring fire once Sapphire had settled. And they had talked.

They’d talked about anything and everything, from childhood scrapes to their preferred methods for polishing their boots. Hopes and dreams, fears about the future. As the evening had worn on and the flagon (and then its refill) grew emptier, the conversation grew more intimate still.

Brienne had told them about her father’s letter, how on learning that she was with child, Selwyn Tarth had written to inform his daughter that her cousin was now the heir to Tarth and that the Kingslayer’s Whore was no longer welcome at Evenfall.

_The Kingslayer’s Whore_. She said it so lightly, for something so terrible. Jaime had been stung – cut deeply at the thought. By the guilt of it. Her whole life, every noble, honourable action she had ever taken, every innocent she’d saved, every wrong she’d righted … just swamped by a moon’s worth of bedding _him_. The unfairness of it hurt.

_They Lay With Lions_. No woman was impervious to _that_ curse.

Then Addam had talked about how he had felt when Brienne had bedded him, how he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her afterwards. All the time he was in the capital, trying to think of excuses to go back to the farm. He’d spoken of his fears that she had died saving Sapphire from the flames. How he’d grieved her, how he’d never wanted to be with someone so much in his life.

Jaime felt shit about _that_ , too. All of this set in motion because they were defending him.

So, once they had finished, Jaime talked about Cersei for the first time. Everything. He told them how he had come into this world holding her foot, how he and she always told themselves they were one soul in two bodies. Always together. Swapping clothes as children, sleeping in the same bed. Watching animals rutting, acting it out themselves. How it went from innocence to deviance to dependence, how he didn’t understand _how_.

He told Brienne and Addam that as they grew older, the twins’ lives went in two different directions because of their gender. How angry and frustrated and resentful that made Cersei. How Jaime felt as though he owed her his love because he could not give her his life to wear as her own any more.

How, slowly and surely, that guilt had eaten him. How Cersei had eaten him. Chewed on him, fat and gristle, devoured him until he was nothing more than empty. Hollow. Helpless. And how it had felt so very much like love as she had done it.

He saw it now. They’d hated each other as much as they’d loved – and what was the difference anyway? They had burned each other to the ground and almost taken the Seven Kingdoms with them.

When he had finished, Addam and Brienne had held him. Not saying anything, not absolving him. Not judging him, either. Just knowing what he knew, and loving him anyway. Believing him worthy of their love.

It had been well into the Hour of the Bat when they had finally gone to bed, and it was strange, but lovemaking had not seemed to occur to any of them. They had cuddled up like kittens in a basket and just … slept.

Now, as the sweet, soft light of dawn crept over the keep, Jaime gently extracted himself from the two of them and reached for his cane.

He clambered out of Robert’s huge four-poster bed on stiff, aching legs and paused to use the chamber pot before finding last night’s clothes. Pulling them on, not quite sure if he was wearing Brienne’s breeches or his own. It didn’t matter.

He limped back across the room to find himself looking at the big blue eyes of Sapphire, sitting up and blinking herself awake in her cot. A big smile broke out on her face, and she got to her feet, holding her arms out over the bars towards Jaime.

“Papa!” she called. “Papapapapa!”

This was new – over the past moon, Sapphire had gone from babbling to copying, and then to saying words. Actual words. So far “Mama” and “Papa” were her most frequent, the latter used interchangeably for Addam and Jaime.

It made Jaime’s heart sing.

The sound of Sapphire’s voice roused Brienne from sleep – she sat up, bleary-eyed and crazy-haired. Addam slid off her rear, which woke him, too.

Jaime lifted Sapphire from the cot and kissed her soft curls before setting her on the bed to change her sodden overnight napkin.

“Good morning,” he bade the sleepy knights before him.

Brienne stretched – Jaime caught Addam admiring the sheer length of her. Pressing a kiss to her ribs and slinging an arm about her waist. Brienne kissed the top of his copper head and got up.

Sapphire chatted away to her own toes, waving them in the air above her face. Jaime rolled her this way and that to wash her and dry her and replace her napkin. Chatting to her and making faces to make her laugh.

It was then, with Addam taking a piss in the chamber pot and Brienne washing herself bare-breasted at the washbowl, that there was a knock at the door.

“Just a moment!” Brienne called. She shrugged a tunic over her head. Addam tucked his cock away.

Brienne opened the door to the slender, elegant form of Ireyne Gaege. She had come into the city just over a moon ago, accompanying Maester Quagg. The maester was half her age and had been her employee, a part of her rich merchant husband’s household.

Ireyne was smart and sharp-witted, and had been quite bored managing her husband’s affairs. Maester Quagg had introduced her to a world of knowledge, of history and astronomy and philosophy. She, in turn, had shown him things he had never dared dream of – she had been a woman never afraid to experience the pleasures of the flesh – and the two of them had fallen deeply in love.

“Good morning,” Jaime called as he wrestled Sapphire into some little breeches.

“Good morning to you all, Sers,” Ireyne smiled. She was dressed simply in linens, but somehow she always looked polished, her black hair gleaming and her high cheekbones with just the right amount of rouge. She was friendly, warm, a little flirtatious. Jaime always liked to think this is what Cersei could have been like had she not been highborn. Had she not been a Lannister.

A pointless thought, but somewhat kinder than most that he had about his twin.

“How goes the research?” asked Addam, slipping his boots on.

“Well, that’s the thing,” Ireyne said with a flash of her rich brown eyes. “Quagg has found something he thinks you should see.”

This was welcome news, indeed. It had been near a moon since they had set Maester Quagg to the task of researching their situation – the tree, the visions, any of the images therein. So far, he had found little of interest.

The three of them exchanged glances.

“Excellent,” Jaime said. “We will be down to the library at once.”

“Marvelous,” Ireyne purred. “Oh – there’s some more people outside waiting to see you, too?”

“To see me?” Jaime asked, surprised.

Ireyne smiled, rather coquettishly. “You are the king, are you not?”

“Rumour has it,” Jaime said, smiling back.

Brienne paused even as she shrugged herself into her doublet. She looked between Jaime and Ireyne with narrowed eyes. “Thank you,” she told Ireyne crisply. “We’ll be down in a moment.”

Jaime almost laughed. As if a rich, cultured, attractive woman like that would give his broken body a second glance. His Golden Lion days were well behind him.

Ireyne bade them farewell, but left the door open behind her for the other visitors.

It was Dyanne and Sophey, both of whom looked nervous. Jaime noticed that they held hands, a little too tightly.

“Might we beg a moment of your time, Ser?” asked Dyanne.

Jaime passed Sapphire to her other Papa and limped out of the king’s chambers, into the corridor outside. Leaned on his cane to get down the three steps right outside.

It was a position he knew well – how many years had he stood guard on this very spot?

“Is something amiss?” he asked the two women before him.

“No, Ser,” Dyanne said.

“Not at all,” Sophey echoed.

“It’s just … we see how things are here,” Dyanne continued. She nodded her head in the direction of the chambers Jaime had just left. “We see how things are different.”

“What? Oh, you mean –”

“Ser Brienne has two husbands, yes? Or the like of that. The three of you are –?”

“Yes,” Jaime concurred. Although they hadn’t made an announcement of it, they hadn’t exactly been secretive either – both he and Addam were publicly affectionate towards Brienne and she them.

“That’s what we thought,” said Sophey.

“So we wondered,” Dyanne said, “if we’re doing things differently, whether you would …”

She dithered for a moment. Sophey looked to her. Urged her with her eyes.

“Whether you would consent to marry us.” It was Sophey who finished.

“Marry you?” Jaime asked. “You mean … to each other?”

Dyanne’s face fell at his confusion. “If you think it would be an affront to the gods, of course, then … we understand.”

Jaime gaped. It took him a moment to process it. They wanted to marry? They wanted to marry each other? Such a thing had never occurred to him. A marriage was a union in which to raise children, was it not?

But then … did not men and women remain married even if they were not blessed with offspring? Did elderly people not marry, well after the chance of children had passed? Surely then, a marriage was about something more? About feelings, perhaps. About love.

“Of course,” he said, as soon as he’d thought it through. “I have no fear of offending the gods, it’s a little late for that.”

Dyanne and Sophey looked at each other, their mouths dropping open as if they scarcely believed it. “Truly?” Sophey asked. “Truly, Ser?”

“Of course,” he said again. He had no doubt of the veracity of their love. It was a palpable thing standing right before him. “We have no Septon, though. No one to officiate.”

“No, Ser,” said Dyanne. “But perhaps that’s best. Septons are always drunk or dirty old bastards in my experience. Never met a one I much cared for. We’d quite like to be married by _you_.”

“By me?”

“You’re our king and our leader. It was you we followed here. And … you are a mouthpiece for something divine, are you not? Far more than any grubby Septon I’ve ever met.”

Jaime stammered, but he could not disagree. Finally, he reached out and squeezed Dyanne’s arm. “It would be an honour.”

There were tears in both women’s eyes, and Jaime felt his own getting distinctly moist, too.

“Plan yourselves a beautiful wedding,” he told them. “It will be a cause for celebration. We all need to celebrate.”

“We will! Thank you, Ser.”

They thanks him again and rushed away excitedly – Jaime couldn’t hold back the grin on his face.

When he went back into his chambers, everyone was ready to go. Brienne carried Sapphire, and Addam followed behind, dressed smartly in a bottle green cape.

He split from them to go to the ballroom to fetch breakfast for them, and Jaime, Brienne and Sapphire continued down and through the keep, headed for the library.

Maester Quagg was there, seated at a table in the large, central chamber. The table had seats for twelve, but he had covered the surface in dozens of books, some open, some in piles.

The maester was a young man in his twenties, pale-skinned, reed-thin with very close-cropped brown hair. His eyes were a watery blue and were rimmed with red from lack of sleep. Whatever he had found, he had clearly been here all night.

Ireyne looked up as they came in, another instantly charming smile on her face. She poured something hot into cups. “Would you care for some tea?” she asked.

“Please,” said Jaime.

Brienne ignored her. “Maester,” she said. “You found something?”

“I believe so.”

“What is it?” Jaime limped to the maester’s side, and Ireyne put a steaming teacup in front of him with another smile.

Brienne wrapped her hand around Oathkeeper’s hilt. Her fingers clenching.

Quagg fumbled through a pile of books in front of him, suddenly looking a little nervous now his moment was upon him. He pulled out a small tome barely bigger than his hand, bound in green leather.

Jaime barely had time to sound out the first letter of the title before Quagg opened it.

“It’s – well, it’s a diary of a travelling Septon,” the maester said. “One Septon Garrel. He was known to have some strange ideas about the Seven, so I thought it may contain some clues. Here.”

He put the book on the table, stabbing a passage of text with a thin finger. Jaime squinted, trying to make sense of it. Trying to make sense of any one of the words. As usual, it was a mass of jumbled letters he really couldn’t read.

“Oh,” said Brienne. “Oh, gods.”

Her eyes went to Jaime’s, wide and concerned. She must have seen the confusion there, because she nodded to him and then said: “So … am I reading this correctly? Septon Garrel said people left Westeros? In couples? Pairs … people in love?”

“Yes,” Quagg agreed. “There’s just a mention – it’s nowhere else in his diaries apart from that. But I thought it was similar enough to our own situation that I thought it worth some research.”

“Where did they go?” Jaime asked.

“He didn’t specify that. But he was in Lannisport when he wrote this, and I thought it interesting that he said they ‘left Westeros’ and not ‘left Lannisport’.”

“Essos?” Brienne asked. “Could they have gone to Essos?”

Just then, Addam came in, balancing a tray of breakfast plates. Maester Quagg looked a little nervous as he put them down next to the books.

Sapphire immediately reached for Addam, another chorus of “Papapapapapa” echoing in the tall, domed ceiling.

Addam took her from Brienne’s arms and sat with her on his knee. He passed her a finger of thick, fresh bread, and scooped some scrambled egg onto a spoon.

“Essos was my thought,” Quagg said, not entirely taking his eye off Addam’s food as he fished around for another tome. “So I turned my attention from Westerosi history to Essosi.”

The book he picked up was large and bound in a hard, shiny cover in mottled shades of brown. Tortoiseshell, Jaime knew – Cersei had owned jewellery made of it. But no sooner had the thought crossed his mind than he knew he was wrong.

Not tortoiseshell. Turtleshell. The mark on his chest rippled to life.

“What is this?” Brienne asked. She sounded a little breathless.

“An account,” Quagg replied. “Another travelling Septon, this one travelling in Essos.”

He opened the book’s beautiful cover. This had been written in a beautiful, neat hand. Much easier for Jaime to read.

FOR LOVE OF THE OLD MAN

It was titled. The page was inscribed with pictures of trees. Black ink trees.

“I’ve been reading it all night,” Quagg said. He sounded breathless, too. There was something charged in the air, something potent and powerful.

Brienne’s face was flushed, her pupils wide. Ireyne bit her full lower lip. Quagg’s hand shook as he turned the title page. In his breeches, Jaime felt his cock stir.

Addam looked between them all, his brow furrowed in confusion. Sapphire took a spoonful of egg from his hand.

“It was written a century ago,” Quagg said from a thick throat. “By a Septon Lonmouth. He hailed from Maidenpool by his own account, but I can find no other tell of him. He certainly wasn’t a distinguished member of the clergy.”

“But he went to Essos?” Jaime asked.

“He did. So far as I can tell, he left at around the time Septon Garrel spoke of. He left with a woman, too.”

“For love …” Jaime breathed.

“He’s not specific about that in the book – he refers to her only as his companion, but I think it’s reasonable to infer they were more than that.”

“Where did they go?” asked Brienne.

“A settlement somewhere on the Rhoyne, though it’s not named. Lonmouth has kept many details to himself I’m afraid. Perhaps he had secrets he wanted to protect?”

“Like what?” asked Addam from the other side of the table.

“It seems as though all the people followed a man there.”

“A man?” asked Brienne. Her eyes went to Jaime.

Quagg nodded. “A Ghiscari man, named Shiqhol na Dhazzi. From the early writings in this book, it seems as though he was a former slave. Not a learned man or a noble of any kind. But Lonmouth speaks of him as a leader. As someone they were drawn to. People from all walks of life.”

“Like us,” said Ireyne. She held Jaime’s eyes with her own. “The way we were drawn to you.”

“Exactly,” Quagg concurred. “Now, there’s some creative language used here, some very florid descriptions. But … Shiqhol na Dhazzi seems to have been what we would call a Greenseer. In Westeros, we tie Greenseeing in with the Children of the Forest, with the First Men. With trees native to Westeros like the Weirwood. In Essos, the mythology is quite different.”

“How so?” Jaime asked. He started to feel a little warm. Remembering what Bran Stark had told him before he’d died.

“There, we see it tied in with the cult of the warlocks in Qarth, the visions and the prophecies. Their consumption of a hallucinogenic potion called Shade of the Evening.”

“I’ve heard tell of that,” Brienne said. “Daenerys Targaryen was supposed to have imbibed Shade of the Evening while she was in Essos. To give her knowledge of the future.”

“Here.” Quagg reached for another book, a history of Essos that he had left open to his right. He tapped the open page with a finger. “Read. This is a more detailed description of the stuff. I thought it interesting.”

Brienne turned the book to face her. She read in silence for a moment, her lips moving as she did. Then, she looked up sharply. Maester Quagg nodded.

“What?” said Jaime and Addam in unison.

Brienne dipped her head again, this time reading aloud. “’I observed Shade of the Evening to be a thick, blue liquid, mostly used by the warlocks of Qarth. Some call it ‘the wine of warlocks’, but it is in fact not wine at all, for there are no grapes within. Instead, it is made from the inky blue leaves that grow on the black-barked trees found around the House of the Undying.’”

“Black … trees?” asked Jaime. He felt quite lightheaded. “Blue leaves. Blue flowers, too?”

“It would appear so,” Quagg said. “Shiqhol na Dhazzi was said to make the trees weep with his beauty – they wept flowers. Septon Lonmouth describes how these trees sprouted from the ground at his command, and how they were part of him.”

He thumbed through the pages of the turtleshell book to find an illustration. Septon Lonmouth was not much of an artist, but the image was clear enough. A man, with flowing dark curls, wrapped in a tree. His arms stretched above him, his face beatific.

“He was a man of love,” Quagg said reverently. He absently let a finger stroke over the image. “All who followed him loved him, and loved each other, too.”

He flicked further through the book, to show them more illustrations. These ones seemed more suited to the parchments that Tyrion had kept under his bed as a youth – they were scenes of well … of sex. Lots of it. Very explicit scenes.

“Gods!” said Brienne. She looked strangely horrified for a woman who took two cocks inside her at once on a semi-regular basis.

Ireyne had a naughty smile on her face.

Addam turned Sapphire away.

As the pages went on, these scenes grew bigger. Not group sex exactly, not orgies where everyone had sex with anyone and everything, but ritualistic sex, beneath trees, by the river, in beds of flowers, on the naked grass. Public and open.

Jaime gaped. Nothing like that had happened _here_. Were Essosi people just more open about that sort of thing? Was it a cultural difference? Or could he expect to see scenes like this happen in the Red Keep soon?

“What is this?” Addam asked. He couldn’t look the maester in the eye.

“An act of worship,” Quagg replied.

“Worship?” Addam gaped. “What … of the gods?”

“Yes. Though not the Seven.”

“What gods then? Some Essosi idols?”

“One god, specifically. The Old Man of the River.”

The name made Jaime flinch. It was familiar and unfamiliar, all at once. Something sweet and sharp that his head _knew._ All along his long scar, deep inside his brain.

“The turtle,” he said, without saying it consciously.

Brienne and Addam looked at him, wide-eyed.

“You know your Essosi gods, Ser,” said Quagg, impressed.

Jaime didn’t, not truly, but also he _did_. This one was a part of him, a part of who he’d always been. The turtle sat in his dreams, sat in his visions, as wild as Cersei, as strong and steadfast as Brienne. As much a part of him as Sapphire.

“Who is this Old Man?” Addam demanded.

Maester Quagg groped about for yet another book, this one a study on Essosi gods. He set it down, open, in front of Addam; Sapphire immediately reached for it with buttery hands. Addam pushed it out of her reach. Offered her another spoonful of egg.

On the page, Jaime saw an illustration of a turtle, a huge, horned thing as big as a river barge. It bore little resemblance to the small, calming creature he had seen in his visions, but he supposed most men needed their gods to be intimidating.

“Essosi lore says that the Old Man of the River is the son of Mother Rhoyne – a lesser god, we’d say, so there’s little information in Westerosi books. The only item noted was a legend of how the Old Man battled with a Crab King for dominion of life under the water.”

Quagg turned back to the account of Septon Lonmouth.

“Which is interesting, because … after these … these _carnal rituals_ , things in Lonmouth’s account become more vague – his language much more poetic. It‘s a possibility that he died before he could finish writing this tale? Possibly he suffered from an affliction of the mind? But there’s lots of talk about a place called The Underwater, and Shiqhol na Dhazzi trying to open a door or find an entrance. Possibly it’s a reference to an afterlife belief?”

Jaime nodded. It wasn’t, he knew, but he didn’t know what it _was_ , either. The information sat tantalisingly out of reach in his mind.

“It needs further research,” Quagg said, scratching his head.

“But not now,” Ireyne said firmly. “You have been awake all night; you require rest, my love.”

She shot a look at Jaime, expecting him to back her.

“O-of course,” Jaime said, still reeling a little from the new information.

Addam stood up, plonking Sapphire onto the chair he’d vacated. “We need some time to absorb all of this, I think. I’d quite like to read some of these books for myself. The Septon’s account, particularly. We have found commonalities, but … still no explanations. Why has this god of the Rhoyne manifested in Westeros? Why has it chosen Jaime as its mouthpiece? What could he possibly have in common with this Ghiscari former slave?”

“Indeed,” the maester agreed. “Still so many questions. Much to find out.”

“Take your leave, maester,” Brienne said. “Please, rest. You have done an excellent job.”

Quagg thanked them, and left the library, Ireyne on his arm. Their minds were both caught by thoughts of making love, Jaime knew. He felt the ripple of their desire, the electricity that passed between them as they touched.

So absorbed was he in their feelings that he failed to notice Sapphire reaching out and grabbing the book on Essosi gods that Quagg had placed before Addam.

None of them noticed, in fact, until she had clambered up onto the table and torn several pages from the thing, throwing them over her shoulder with glee.

“Oh, shit!” cried Brienne. “Sapphire!”

Addam span around to grab the babe. He pulled the book from her sticky little hands and set her on her feet on the floor. She proceeded to run off, down one of the long aisles lined with bookcases.

Jaime limped after her, but she was fast on her feet and could easily outrun him on this slippery floor, hobbling with his cane. Brienne chased after her, catching her as she swept a bookshelf of several priceless tomes.

“Gods,” Brienne groaned, picking her up. “A library is no place for a babe. Perhaps Nira will mind her for a while? It might spare the maester a fainting fit or two.”

Jaime lowered himself gingerly to his knees to pick up his daughter’s mess. “That might be a good idea.”

“I’ll take her now,” Brienne sighed. “Say bye-bye to Papa, Sapphire.”

Jaime waved up at his daughter from the floor, smiling when she returned the gesture with a chorus of bye-byes and papas.

Brienne left, and once he’d finished picking up the thrown books, Jaime limped back through the library’s long, silent aisles to find Addam.

He was still at the reading table, sat with his boots on the table and the turtleshell tome on his lap.

“Your breakfast is getting cold,” he said without looking up.

Jaime sat. Pushed his eggs about his plate. Picked at his kippers.

Addam turned a page, and Jaime caught sight of what he was looking at and grinned.

“I should have known you’d go straight for the sexy parts.”

Addam did not so much as crack a smile. “It concerns me.”

“Sex?”

“I want to make sure that we – that _Brienne_ – is doing this because she wants to, and not because we’re all under the influence of a hallucinogenic tree.”

“I think she wants to.”

“Hmm,” said Addam. He turned over another page, depicting a couple, two men, in full flagrante before a tree.

“She seems quite the same to me,” Jaime said around a mouthful of kipper. It was soaked in butter and quite delicious. “You know – the same as she did at Winterfell. She was always … enthusiastic about bedding me, always passionate about it. I assume it was the same for the two of you?”

“It was,” Addam admitted. “She was never one to lie there like a log.”

“She’s been very much in control of it all, has she not? She’s no helpless maid.”

Addam cocked an eyebrow. “We are all helpless maids in the face of the gods, Jaime.”

“Then what do you think we could do? Even if this is some sort of collective delusion, it’s not like we could defy _gods_. They do with us what they will. We don’t get to choose –”

“I don’t want to come out of this hating each other,” Addam blurted. “Not her. Not you. I – I want this to be _real_.”

“It’s real. We may have had our inhibitions lowered, but the feelings beneath … they’re real.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because everyone who came here is the same. Everyone. Quagg and Ireyne, Brack and Marcyn. Dyanne and Sophey. They came here already together – the feelings existed long before they felt the pull of the tree. Of the Old Man. Ours did, too. Brienne loved both of us, she lay with both of us.”

“Not at the same time.”

“Semantics,” Jaime said with a wave of his fork. He grinned. “We have never lived in a world where such things were possible, even if she hadn’t been so angry at me.”

“She _was_ angry,” Addam admitted.

“She had a right to be. And look – there’s another reason. Does she trust me yet? Would she feel comfortable bedding me without you there? No.”

“She will,” Addam said.

“It doesn’t matter, I understand it. But … that’s what I mean. Brienne sets the boundaries. If she were under the sway of a malevolent sex god then surely none of that would concern her any more?”

Addam nodded. “That is true.”

“And if she were to walk in here at this very moment and tell us it was over and that she did not wish to lie with us again, we would not rape her, would we? We would accept it, no matter how devastated we might be.”

“Yes. Of course!”

“That sounds like the behaviour of people who are in control.”

Addam sighed.

Just then, Brienne pushed open the heavy oaken doors of the library, returning without Sapphire in her arms.

She approached the table. Both men looked expectantly up at her.

“What?” she asked. “What’s amiss?”

“You’re not going to tell us you don’t wish to lie with us any more, are you?” Jaime grinned.

“What?” she said again. “Of course not!”

Addam smiled a little. “That is a relief.”

“Why? Were you concerned I might?”

“Not truly!” Jaime laughed.

“Maybe,” said Addam.

Both Jaime and Brienne looked sharply at him. Wide-eyed.

He shrugged. “Tisn’t every day you find out you are participating in sex rituals for a turtle god. I would understand if you didn’t wish to do it any more.”

Brienne sat down. Picked up her breakfast plate and put it on top of some no-doubt-priceless books. “It’s not a ritual,” she said. “It’s only sex.”

“I don’t think there’s any ‘only’ about what we do,” Jaime said, mock-wounded.

A naughty smirk grew on Brienne’s face even as she forked a load of egg into her mouth. “Well, I’d say taking your two cocks at once is very definitely something divine. But what I mean is … it’s not like _that_ , is it? Not like those drawings. We’re not doing it in public or under trees or as worship.”

“Nonetheless, it has that component,” Addam argued. “If this is true, if it has any connection to us, then we’ve been participating in something entirely against our will. I mean … I’ve never heard of this Old Man of the River before today, but … apparently, I’m a key member of his congregation?”

Brienne put down her fork. Wiped her mouth. Her eyes were huge, suddenly.

“Addam,” she said softly. “Is it _you_ who doesn’t want to do this any more?”

“No!” Addam cried. Then he said “Maybe.”

“Oh,” said Brienne.

Jaime couldn’t speak.

Silence fell, the loudest silence Jaime had ever heard in his life. Brienne was pale. Her chin wobbled slightly.

“You know I love you,” Addam said. “Both of you. And this is … it’s been the most incredible, fulfilling, happiest time of my life.”

Jaime nodded. “We’re a family.”

“We are. Sapphire is … well, she’s as my daughter, you know that.”

“You’re her Papa,” said Brienne.

“That means more to me than anything. Literally _anything_. I don’t want to give that up.”

“Then _don’t_ ,” said Brienne. Her voice wavered and then cracked.

Addam reached for her hand. Took it and squeezed it. “I’m not leaving you. I don’t want that. But this …”

He looked down at the book on his lap, at the pictures of the rituals, the trees, the sex.

“This is too much,” he said. His voice barely above a whisper. “I need to know what’s going on before I blindly continue with what we’ve been doing. I need to know.”

“We need you,” Jaime said. “This isn’t just about us. Arya Stark is coming. She –”

“Yes, I know …”

“All my visions, all of them. You, me and Brienne. Us together. That’s the point.”

“I don’t want to be together because of some visions, though. Not for an Essosi god or as part of a ritual. I want it because _we_ want it, because it’s about _us_.”

“But we _do_ want it,” said Brienne.

“We don’t know that. We don’t know anything. The people in this book … it sounds as though they went mad. Trying to open a door to the afterlife? What if this … the three of us bedding each other in this way is a symptom of such madness? What if we’re escalating it for everybody? What if we’re leading them to their deaths? I can’t discount that.”

Brienne looked like she’d been punched in the stomach. “So what are you going to do? Leave the city, go back to your father?”

“No. I don’t … I don’t want that. I don’t want to leave either of you, or Sapphire. Perhaps I need a little time. A little clarity. It’s like Jaime said – I need to know I’m still in control.”

“But you _are_ –”

“Please. Brienne. Please don’t. I … it’s not that I wish to end things. I told you – I love you both still.”

“What about us?” Jaime asked. “The two of us? If you’re not there, then we –”

“I have no problem if you want to carry on without me.”

“No,” said Brienne. “No.”

She got up, walked away from the table. Stood with her back to both of them. Jaime wanted to go to her, wrap her hard in his arms, but … he remembered what she’d said. Not without Addam. She didn’t trust him. She couldn’t –

“I’ll find chambers of my own,” Addam said. “In another part of the keep. Give us all some space and time to think.”

“Of course,” said Jaime.

Brienne was silent. Was she crying? Gods, the thought hurt him more than every brick in the Red Keep had. He was haunted by the image – Brienne in the courtyard of Winterfell, her face luminous and colourless as she wept for him, wept over him.

But then she turned back, and her eyes were dry. She just looked very tired. Very forlorn. “I understand,” she said. “I know you’ve struggled with this; if this is what you need, then take it.”

A surge of jealousy hit Jaime square in the chest, followed swiftly by a surge of shame. Of course this was different from him leaving Winterfell. Addam hadn’t tried to leave while they slept, nor had he gone to be with someone else. He had been honest with them, told them he loved them still. Treated them with respect and had not been a coward. He just wanted some time to work out a difficult situation—something he didn’t understand.

Jaime nodded too. “Of course,” he said again. “Whatever you need.”

“I should get to the yard,” Brienne said then. Her hands fidgety. “I promised there would be sparring today. I think it would be good to take my mind off things.”

Addam nodded. He stood, too. He looked like he ached to touch Brienne, but he didn’t try. Jaime remembered the soft look his bannerman had given Brienne when he’d watched her stretch this morning. The tender kiss he’d placed on her ribs.

Brienne walked past both of them, but stopped when she saw the pages that Sapphire had torn from the book about Essosi gods. They were scattered on the floor. Brienne bent to pick them up.

“Oh,” she said. Looked up at Addam and Jaime with wide eyes.

“What is it?” Addam asked.

She stood. Put the pages on the tabletop. “Look.”

Jaime rounded the table to stand at her side. Looked at what she pointed at. It was a page titled in flowing calligraphy: _The Crab King_

The Crab King. It was he that the Old Man of the River had fought for dominion of this Underwater.

Beneath the title was an illustration of the god, sketched in ink.

He was like no crab Jaime had ever seen. Not a literal crab. Rather he was a man, thin-faced, narrow-eyed. Dark hair cut straight across his brow.

“That’s …” Addam said, but he couldn’t seem to complete the sentence.

“Bran Stark,” said Jaime, breathlessly. “It’s Bran Stark.”

But that wasn’t the worst of it. The god who looked like Bran Stark was only part man. Instead of arms, he had long, thin, chitinous claws protruding from his sleeves, like those of a crab. Black and gleaming, as long and as sharp as swords.

Jaime recognised them too, as did Brienne. It was them her finger was resting on.

They had seen them before. One of them had been that thing hanging on Arya Stark’s belt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much everyone for the amazing comments on the last chapter. I'm so happy to see that you're all enjoying this story still. I'm really excited to share the ending with you.
> 
> Huge thanks to CaptainTarthister this week for holding my hand and being a sounding board when things took an unexpected turn.
> 
> I hope that you will check out the wonderful [Us Without Each Other playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/32FUnK5tIi3Hqu9rTvjeok)! It's compiled and updated by a lovely reader who updates it with new songs for every chapter. 
> 
> Chapter 9 will be with you in approximately two weeks! If you'd like to get some teasers and updates, then please do consider following me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/).


	9. Stronger Than I Am

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> " _She is stronger than I am._
> 
> The realisation chilled him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Banner by the lovely [@WakingDreams82](https://twitter.com/WakingDreams82) on Twitter.

Sapphire cried.

Brienne dragged herself out of bed for the eleventh time, grateful that she could at least see a little bit of light filtering over the horizon this time. It was almost dawn.

Sapphire had coughed herself awake again – she stood up in her cot screaming, snot streaking her face from her runny nose. Brienne picked her daughter up and cuddled her. Took her to the washbowl to clean her face. Rocked her and soothed her.

Sapphire had caught a cold.

Not a bad one, but coupled with a bout of teething, it was enough to have her up and screaming a dozen times in the night. This had gone on for four days now, and Brienne was exhausted.

She took Sapphire back to her own bed and lay her on her side to suckle.

It didn’t help much. Sapphire desperately wanted the comfort of her mother’s breast, but with a stuffed-up nose, she needed to breathe through her mouth, too. She would suckle for a moment then pull off, spluttering and wailing when she couldn’t breathe. The whole kerfuffle resulted in a frustrated, overtired, wailing babe and very little sleep.

This was desperately hard alone – Brienne had quite forgotten. Part of her was back in her billet, pacing the floor all night with a crying babe she had no idea how to soothe, wanting to murder her neighbours as they yelled at her about the noise.

Both of Sapphire’s papas were still very much involved during the day, but the nights …

Gods, this bed felt _huge_ at night – huge … and cold, as well. Brienne had grown so accustomed to the warmth of two other bodies that she’d been forced to wrap herself in two extra blankets in their stead. Still, she’d lost count of the number of times she’d woken in the night in a panic, wondering where Addam and Jaime were.

It wasn’t like it had been in Winterfell after Jaime left, though. Not that same burning rage, not that same humiliation. She had cried, of course, but not endlessly, not until she thought she was going to break apart, until she thought she would never be able to leave her room again.

Perhaps she was stronger now? But no – pain like that didn’t make you stronger. It made you cower, made you defensive and uncertain. It broke your ability to trust and made you hard and bitter. Brienne was under no illusions that the effect Jaime had was bad.

The difference now was that Addam had treated her respectfully.

Her and Jaime both. He’d talked to them, been honest about how he felt. He hadn’t lied or tried to sneak out in the night. Brienne was devastated – she hated it. But she understood.

In the moon since Addam had made his decision, she’d read through the book that Maester Quagg had found in the library of King’s Landing, read through it more than once.

 _For Love of the Old Man_ was a spellbinding read, in a way Brienne wasn’t sure was entirely natural. Even that smooth, polished turtleshell cover sent little shocks through her body when she touched it. She found herself thinking of Shiqhol na Dhazzi when she wasn’t reading about him, about that picture of him wrapped naked in a tree.

The drawing was crude – Septon Lonmouth has been no skilled artist – but still she thought on the happy tilt of his smiling eyes, the richness of his long dark curls.

There had been nothing about that which would have reassured Addam. Perhaps it was best that he stayed away.

Finally, she and Sapphire fell asleep, and when they woke, the sun was well up and the toll for breakfast was sounding in the Sept.

Brienne was late. She leapt out of bed and dashed for the window.

 _Shit_.

In the training yard below, she could see her recruits, already gathered. Already armoured, and armed with their training swords. They were chatting, sparring lightly, laughing and happy.

It was a happy day – this morning was to be a shortened, informal session due to the celebration taking place later on that all would attend. Today was the day that Dyanne would marry Sophey.

Brienne threw some clothes on, not noticing until her tunic was laced that she had food on one breast. On one leg of her breeches, too.

Sapphire decided to wait until she was naked to run around the room, shrieking and giggling, forcing her mother to give chase and capture her in order to wrestle a napkin and some clothes onto her.

By the time they reached Jaime in the Queen’s ballroom, there wasn’t much time left for training.

Jaime gave a broad smile as he saw them – he was helping Wyll, a small boy whose parents were fishermen, scoop porridge into a bowl. He was probably doing a worse job of it than the boy himself could manage.

An older girl was beside him, Tacy. Her mother mostly worked in the kitchens. She chewed a heel of fresh bread smothered in jam. Beside her sat Cayle, the little boy who polished the shoes. He was tucking into his own bowl of porridge.

Somehow, of late, Jaime had become minder to these children while their parents worked.

The task had been good for him, Brienne thought. It was rare these days to see him without a smile on his face or engaged in an animated conversation with one of his followers. Without a child tugging on his sleeve or asleep on his shoulder.

“Good morrow to you, my lovely girl,” Jaime greeted his daughter as she reached for him with a chorus of Papapapas. He frowned when he saw Brienne, and she couldn’t blame him. She’d not had time to brush her hair and her reflection in the looking glass had been less than pleasing when she left her chambers. “Another rough night?”

She nodded. “And now we overslept.”

“No time to break your fast?”

“Sadly not.” That porridge did look good.

“Never mind. Two whole pigs are cooking in the kitchen keep for the wedding feast. Basted in honey and salted for the crackling.”

Brienne groaned. That sounded like a slice of the seven heavens right now.

“We’ll get Sapphire some porridge and then we were all going to play swords in the middle bailey.”

Last week, Alara and Ellion had helped Jaime to make the smaller children a wooden sword and shield each, and now they all enjoyed running around like mad things, hitting each other with them, while Jaime did some gentle drills with the older ones.

He called it “playing”, but Brienne saw it. She saw the delight in his eyes as he watched them, and she caught the extra-special eye he kept on Sapphire, too. There was a part of Jaime, a part that had been long-buried beneath misery and cynicism, that still felt pride in his accomplishments as a swordsman. A part that would be bursting with pride should his daughter inherit those skills.

That, Brienne had discovered, was an unexpected joy of having a child. Seeing things in that new little person that you struggled with in yourself, and loving them. Realising that you could love them in yourself, as well.

She kissed Sapphire goodbye and made her way to the yard, where her trainees awaited her. In recent moons, the squad of those who wished to fight had grown to near forty strong, and Brienne and Addam had been forced to split them into two groups.

Now they took one each, Brienne’s after breakfast and Addam’s after the midday meal. It had been an arrangement of convenience, but now it felt even more lonely. Another time they weren’t together.

Thanks to her late start, there was not enough time to do the training that she had initially planned, so they went through some drills and did a little light sparring instead. Nothing too taxing – Brienne felt rather sluggish herself this morning thanks to Sapphire and her cold.

She faced off against one of the brides-to-be, the indomitable pig farmer Dyanne. Brienne’s ego had never truly recovered from their first encounter when the woman had taken her completely by surprise with a low tackle, knocking her off her feet.

Dyanne’s fighting methods had grown a lot more honourable since then, but gods, the woman was strong as all the hells. Rudimentary though they were, if Brienne caught one of her blows on high, she could feel her own arms shake. Sometimes, the brawny pig farmer even staggered her. She misliked it, but it was good to train with her.

After a few exercises, the mood turned light and jovial, particularly around Dyanne. The others jested with her, made ribald remarks about the bedding, and a couple of the younger lads had even bought some bottles of ale to start the celebrations early.

As a consequence, Brienne was still late as she left the training yard – she’d hoped to take a bath, press her clothes, perhaps make her hair look at least a little presentable. She certainly hadn’t intended to be light-headed from drinking ale on an empty stomach.

Jaime and the children were no longer in the middle bailey when she got there, either. Nor were they in his chambers. She asked people – no one had seen them. She went down to the ballroom where the preparations for the feast were in full swing – she’d just missed him. Trudged her way back through the keep and finally found him in the throne room.

“A little higher, I think?” he was calling to Brack. Brack was on a ladder, fixing long chains of beautiful blue flowers to the columns that lined the aisle before the tree.

The two stableboys from Duskendale were helping too, refilling the sweet-smelling bowls that lined the floor, plumping the pillows and lighting the myriad of candles that adorned the walls.

The place looked beautiful. Even as tired, hungry and slightly tipsy as she was, Brienne felt herself fill with love, not least when she looked at her daughter, fast asleep on Jaime’s shoulder. Sapphire was muddy and snotty, her curls wild and tangled. She also sported a bruise on her cheek, no doubt where she had been whacked by another child’s sword. Brienne remembered those bruises well.

“You’re right,” Brack said, tying a knot in the fishing line that held the flower chain together. “It looks better up here.”

Jaime grinned. “How dare you doubt my flower arranging skills? You think I endured all those lessons with my sister’s Septa for nothing? I’ll have you know that my embroidery is second-to-none as well!”

Brack laughed uproariously. “I’d say probably not these days!”

Jaime laughed, too. “Well, the lack of a hand doesn’t help, I’ll grant you.”

He caught sight of Brienne then, and turned to her with a broad smile.

“ _Now_ she sleeps!” He rolled his eyes.

She sighed. “I’m _so_ late. And so filthy, too.”

“Nira was drawing me a bath,” he told her with a grimace at her appearance. “Go, take it. Childcare and flower arranging isn’t such sweaty work as training with the sword. I’ll bring Sapphire up once we’re done here.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes, for the gods’ sake, go! You can’t go to a wedding smelling like Addam’s boots.”

Brienne laughed. She’d missed that twinkle in Jaime’s eye – truly no one in this world could rag a man like Jaime Lannister.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Get in while it’s hot. I won’t be long here, I’ll bring Sapphire up, and we can bathe and dress her together.”

Just then, one of the stableboys came up to Jaime, several boxes of Ireyne’s rather oversweet rosewater fudge in their hands.

Brienne watched as Jaime directed them, telling them where the extra bowls were, telling them how to arrange the fudge, where to place it so that everyone could have some as they came in and sat down. He laughed and joked with them, stableboys he would once never have given a second glance to, who he would have handed his horse off to with barely a glance.

She smiled to herself as she left. It was good to see this change in him.

But she had no time to muse on it. She dashed back through the keep to the White Sword Tower to fetch herself and Sapphire some clothes for the wedding and then ran to Maegor’s, up the stairs to the King’s chambers.

As Jaime had promised, Nira was in his chambers, filling his bath with a kettle she’d hung in the fireplace. She, too, was getting ready for the wedding, a robe over her outfit, her hair tied in rags to curl it.

“Ser!” she said with a smile.

“Jaime said I could use his bath. I’ve had a terrible night’s sleep, and I’ve been training all morning.”

“All ready, Ser. Do you want some lemon soap? That beautiful Ireyne who’s with the maester makes it. It smells so heavenly, it –”

“No, thank you,” Brienne said, smartly. Well, that explained why Jaime smelled so lemony of late. “I’ll just use the usual.”

She stripped her clothes off and stepped into the water, feeling instantly more human. She groaned as she lay back in the hot water, inhaling deep of the steam.

“Good, Ser?” Nira asked softly.

“Gods, yes,” said Brienne without so much as opening her eyes.

She stretched out, draping her legs over the sides of the tub, wriggling down so she was submerged to her chin.

“Want me to wash your hair, Ser?” Nira asked.

“Oh, please. That would be wonderful.”

Brienne held her nose and dunked beneath the water to wet her hair. Nira set to work with gentle hands, rubbing the soap into Brienne’s scalp and squeezing it to lather.

It felt so good and so relaxing that Brienne near fell asleep under her handmaid’s ministrations. It was only the arrival of Jaime and Sapphire that roused her.

“You look happier,” said Jaime with a grin.

Brienne only managed an incoherent grunt.

Sapphire was well asleep – she didn’t even stir when Jaime lowered her to the bed.

He limped to the washbowl, stripping to the waist and lathered up a bar that immediately reeked of lemons, even from here.

Brienne grimaced – like everything Ireyne made, it was far too sickly sweet.

She concentrated on soaping herself with her plain lye while Nira rinsed her hair, feeling much refreshed for getting the grime and sweat off her body.

All clean, Brienne climbed out of the bath and reached for a towel. Bent to squeeze the water from her hair. Dried her face and neck. Then, suddenly, she became aware that Jaime was looking at her.

 _Looking_ at her. Wrapping the towel about her wet body, securing it between her breasts. Jaime was looking at her.

She looked at him, and he didn’t look away.

He smiled.

Brienne blinked furiously.

Just then, Sapphire sat up, smearing a runner of snot across her face with the back of her hand and then crying because there was snot on her hand.

“Just in time,” Jaime said, that same smile broadening. He dried himself off and limped over to Sapphire, picking the grotty, snotty babe up and holding her to his bare chest.

Brienne wiped her little nose with a handkerchief and Sapphire wailed again. Her nose was red and sore.

They bathed her between them, crotchety as she was throughout. Then they dressed her in a pretty little woollen dress and bonnet and took it in turns to occupy her and wipe her nose repeatedly while the other one dressed.

In the event, neither of them were late.

Everyone had congregated in the throne room – it was busy and noisy and full of the sound of laughter and chatter.

Some people were lounging on the pillows, others stood, many mingled, moving from group to group. Brienne spotted Addam on the far side of the room, talking with Maester Quagg. Ireyne floated around the room, brandishing a platter of her rosewater fudge. She, of course, had a costly gown on, a sage green one with a shaped bodice and a huge organza skirt that commanded attention wherever she went.

Of course, she spotted Jaime and made a bee-line for him, her eyes lowered and with a coquettish smile on her face as she approached.

“It looks _beautiful_ in here,” she said. “Breathtaking. You _do_ have an eye for the romantic, Jaime.”

Brienne raised an eyebrow – it was _Jaime_ now, was it?

“Thank you.” Jaime returned her smile. “Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve always had something of an tender heart.”

Ireyne laughed, and put her hand on Jaime’s chest, right over his heart. “You’re not as good at hiding it as you think!”

Brienne cleared her throat.

Ireyne turned to her with an amused look on her face, and an archly raised eyebrow. She offered her the plate of fudge.

“No, thank you.” Sapphire, however, reached for the platter with both hands, and Brienne had to step back to stop her grabbing all the sickly pink sweets.

Ireyne turned away with a little wave and continued her sashay around the room, touting her fudge. Brienne bit her tongue.

Just then, Jaime held up his hand – he’d spotted the brides-to-be over near the tree. They were both dressed so beautifully, matching white linen dresses, their hair adorned with the same strings of blue flowers that lined the throne room.

He went to them and greeted them both with warm hugs and multiple cheek-kisses. Brienne dithered by herself for a moment, wishing she had remembered a handkerchief for Sapphire’s runny nose.

Suddenly, there was a hand, holding one. A perfectly-pressed pale grey handkerchief, with a burning tree embroidered on it – the sigil of House Marbrand.

Addam smiled up at her as he leaned in to wipe Sapphire’s nose. “You look quite lovely, Ser,” he said. His voice was soft, and his eyes were full of his smile. Brienne’s heart ached so hard to see him.

“Papa!” Sapphire cried; she held her arms out to him.

He picked the babe from Brienne’s arms and span her around, which made her giggle. He booped her sore little red nose with a finger.

“How are you?” Brienne asked, softly.

“Struggling,” he admitted. “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too. We all do.”

“I know.”

But he didn’t offer to come back, she noticed. And he didn’t touch her, not even once.

He sat beside her on the pillows on the floor, though, as the ceremony began. Sapphire perched on his knee as she played with the toys Brienne had brought to keep her distracted.

Jaime, at the front, passed between the two standing brides as he walked up the steps to the tree. Shedding his clothes as he went. The mark of the tree burned bright and black across his chest. He put his cane down.

The tree reached for him. Cradled him. Embraced him in its branches and wrapped blue flowers about his brow. He smiled, beatific. Stretched his arms out to welcome Dyanne and Sophey forward.

Brienne knew that Jaime had worked hard for this moment – he hadn’t wanted to ape the wedding ceremony the Septons used; he’d wanted to make something that was unique to _them_. Them as a movement, them as a people. As _his_ people. 

It had been important to him.

“My friends,” he said, and Brienne’s heart burst for him. When had Jaime Lannister ever been able to say _my friends_ and mean it? And have it be true? “We are all here because of love.”

There were nods around the room. People leaning closer to each other. Brienne found herself leaning in towards Addam, close enough to feel the warmth of his body through his shirt.

“Love surrounds us,” Jaime continued. “It’s our sword and our shield. Our torch in the darkness. We would kill for it, we would die for it. It’s who we all are, for good or ill. We are love’s chosen people.”

Arms snuck around bodies now. Heads leaned on shoulders. Brienne felt her hand twitch in the direction of Addam’s knee, but she fought the impulse. It was not what he wanted at the moment. She did not think she could bear his rejection.

“And we are here to celebrate that,” Jaime said with a wide, warm smile at Dyanne and Sophey. “Even though love has chosen us for some unknown purpose, it is us who choose who we love. Who we bestow the best of us on, who deserves that, and who best reflects the best part of ourselves.”

Brienne smiled. How much he had changed from that bitter, sardonic man she had dragged across Westeros in chains. The man who thought himself a helpless victim to his own heart.

She had hated him, but she remembered it. It had been her first true glimpse at the man behind the Lannister. The pain in his eyes as he had told her. _We don’t get to choose who we love._ She had seen his eyes, and she had known. Loving his sister was a compulsion; loving her did not make him happy.

“This is what we see today. Two people, Dyanne and Sophey, who have found the best parts of themselves by being together. Who want nothing more than to share that love with us, to have us raise a glass to their happiness and who want me, as their leader, to say their love is true before you all.”

“I will tell you all. Their love is perfection. It shines through this room, through this city like a lighthouse in the dark. We have no need to fear what lies in the shadows while we hold love like this in our hearts.”

His eyes fell on Brienne’s and a ghost of a smile played on his lips. Jaime spoke with such conviction. Since finding the books, since reading about how much Shiqhol na Dhazzi was loved by those who followed him, Jaime had stepped into this role with vigour.

“We don’t need a ritual for this. No special words. The gods, whoever they are, have seen that Dyanne and Sophey have chosen each other, that they wish to be wedded for the rest of their days. We are here to celebrate that choice, to join them in their happiness, and to say that we will stand beside them in love forever.”

Jaime spread his arms wide, and the branches of the tree moved with him, stretching sensuously. The whole congregation let out a sigh of longing. Jaime... Jaime naked in the tree was simply the most beautiful and erotic sight.

Beside her, Brienne felt Addam stiffen. He misliked this effect.

It made Brienne sad. She had never felt such openness, such warmth and caring and acceptance. That was what gave the tree its power. Living here among Jaime’s community had made her realise how much fear she had carried around her whole life. Fear that everyone would laugh at her when she walked into a room, fear that they would laugh when she spoke. Fear of being mocked, not listened to, not taken seriously. Fear of humiliation.

And if that was just her experience, as a highborn woman who was a little taller and uglier than most … How bad must it have been for Dyanne and Sophey before they came here? Having to pose as mother and daughter lest they be castigated everywhere they went. Living with the threat of burning or stoning for the sin of loving one another. Having to be careful about how they looked at each other, how they spoke to each other, careful not to touch too much or in the wrong way. How must it feel to be standing before a crowd of people and wedding one another at last?

How much it must feel like freedom to be here.

For a moment, Brienne was blindingly angry with Addam for not seeing that. For never having to worry about anything in his life, for not understanding all the good that Jaime did here.

But … that wasn’t his fault. Whatever the reason, Addam did not feel the pull of the tree in the same way they did. He saw it all differently, and that was no fault of his own.

At the front, Dyanne and Sophey kissed and embraced, and blossom from the tree fell thick and blue about them. The room swelled with love, and everyone’s voices rose as one, singing that lovely, throbbing song. Brienne realised she was singing, too.

Even Sapphire tried to join in, though her attempt was just shouting.

Everyone got to their feet and all came together to hug the two brides, and each other, too. They were a bundle of hundreds, all embracing. Addam looked uncomfortable, but he slid an arm around Brienne and Sapphire, and the man next to him, too.

Still embracing, they poured out into the sunshine of the afternoon, and made their way through the keep, still singing, chatting and laughing, trailing blue petals in the mud of the yard.

The Queen’s ballroom had also been bedecked with flowers, and the food was laid out and tables laid with lovely silverware and starched white cloths. As Jaime had promised, two of Dyanne and Sophey’s pigs had indeed been slaughtered and spit-roasted, and the air was filled with the smell of them, sweet and delicious. Brienne’s mouth watered.

They all ate with much rejoicing and merriment, interrupted numerous times by boisterous and increasingly ribald toasting of the newlyweds as the afternoon turned to evening. Brienne ate her fill of roasted pork, fed Sapphire all the carrots she could handle and drank more ale than was probably sensible for someone still nursing a babe.

Addam sat opposite her, making polite conversation and looking sadly at her when he thought she wasn’t looking. Sapphire roamed between the two of them, eating carrot after carrot, occasionally taking some across to Jaime, who was seated next to the brides and having his ale repeatedly refilled by Alara.

The joke was on her, though. Brienne noticed that Jaime would tip his ale back into the jug the moment the handmaid’s back was turned. Even after all these moons, he still didn’t like to drink.

He’d pick Sapphire up and nibble on the carrot she offered him, no matter how mushed or chewed it was. He’d give her a replacement from his own plate, and she’d come wandering back to her other parents.

It was nice. In other circumstances, this would have been so wonderful. The three of them would have been so happy.

After the food was finished, Jaime limped his way around the room, stopping at every table to chat and laugh and make fun with everyone present. He clapped the cooks on the back, jested with Brack and Marcyn, talked earnestly with Nira and Alara and Ellion. He hugged both brides warmly, raised his glass in toast to them. Made Dyanne near split her sides laughing with some witty observations about the stableboys.

Brienne watched him. Addam watched him, too.

“It’s done him good, has it not?” Addam asked as he dipped his fork into his third slice of wedding cake. “Us not being together all the time.”

Brienne nodded. “It has.”

“He’s always been an obsessive bastard when it comes to love. Lets himself get consumed – by us, too. This has given him some breathing space, a chance to find out who he is alone.”

Jaime moved to chat with the Summer Islanders now, talking animatedly. Pointing to tables and yelling at people to move up and move them out of the way.

“I suppose we’re seeing the real Jaime now,” Addam continued.

“I like it,” said Brienne.

Addam looked at her.

Brienne shrugged. “He’s more resilient. Don’t you think? How oft did he need attention and reassurance from us? Even before we all lay together.”

“This is true,” Addam agreed around his cake. “Lannisters and their drama.”

“When we lived in the hut, he drove me to near madness.” She grabbed Sapphire as she ran past. Wiped her nose before letting her run off again behind Tacy and little Wyll. “Once he had decided that he loved me after all,” she rolled her eyes. “He’d hang about, just mooning. Pressing me for attention or affection, desperately expecting that his feelings be acknowledged. He hasn’t been like that now.”

“Not at all?”

“Not at all.” She looked over to Jaime, where he was directing the people moving tables. She saw genuine pleasure in his smile, genuine enjoyment of the people around him. “He’s kept his distance, most respectfully. He seems … content. I’ve never known Jaime to be content.”

Addam laughed. Shovelled another forkful of cake into his mouth. “Neither have I.”

“I’m glad he found that.”

He looked at her thoughtfully as he chewed. “It’s … good to see.”

Just then, Babhor, Saquar and Sorra, the three sailors from the Summer Isles who had arrived in the city in the very first days, re-entered the ballroom with their instruments in hand. Jaime led the cheers from the middle of his newly-created dancefloor, and they got up onto one of the tables like it was a makeshift stage. Took a bow.

They played the harp, the fiddle and the horn respectively, and the ballroom was soon alight with the sounds of their merry music. Dyanne and Sophey were the first to dance, swiftly followed by all the children. Sapphire joined in too, hopping about and then wiggling in place, trying to copy Tacy and Wyll.

Jaime backed away, though, limping back to his seat to watch the dancing from afar.

As the evening wore on and the ale kept flowing, the children grew tired, and the adults paired up to dance in their stead. Sapphire ended up tripping over her own feet, bumped her face on the floor and all her illness and grottiness came flooding back. She ran, howling, back to her mother’s arms.

Brienne picked her up and held her tight, kissing her bump better and wiping her nose for near the hundredth time that night. “I think you’ve had enough,” she said with a rueful smile. Sapphire felt heavy and tired in her arms and was pulling at Brienne’s tunic for her teat.

She got up to leave, looking around for Dyanne and Sophey so that she might offer her congratulations and bid them goodnight.

“You can’t leave yet,” Addam said. He was still eating – a second helping of the pork crackling this time. “You haven’t even danced yet.”

Brienne scoffed.

“I hear you love to dance. Or was that just with Renly Baratheon?”

“Gods! Is there anyone alive who doesn’t know that?”

Addam laughed. He put down his fork and stood. “Come on, give me Sapphire. I’ll rock her for a bit, she’ll be asleep in no time.”

“I don’t want to dance.”

“Well … I think Jaime does.”

“Jaime?”

“He’s trapped over there talking to the maester’s bit of stuff. She’s all but got him pinned against the wall.”

Brienne craned her neck to see that Addam was correct – Ireyne was standing entirely too close to Jaime, looking at him with that same flirtatious look she always used.

“If you leave now, he’ll have to dance with her.”

“Gods!”

“A dangerous fate, I’d say, wouldn’t you? She seems something of a maneater.”

Brienne laughed. “She’s rather … forceful.”

“I think Jaime’s had enough forceful women to last him a lifetime.”

“Perhaps so.”

Addam rounded the table and took Sapphire, who was already nodding off. She put her thumb in her mouth and snuggled close to her papa’s chest. “There you go, then.”

“Very well.” Brienne picked up her ale and chugged the rest of it. Wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “One dance.”

She marched across the room. Inserted herself between Jaime and Ireyne. “Do you want to dance?”

Jaime blinked up at her as if he couldn’t believe she was truly real. “Dance?” he managed after a moment. “You mean … with you?”

“You asked for the music, did you not?”

“He did!” said Ireyne from behind her. “He was quite persuasive, too.”

“Well, I –”

“Go on, Jaime!” Ireyne urged. “Don’t be a stick in the mud. Dance with the woman you love.”

“The woman I –”

Perhaps Ireyne wasn’t so bad after all, Brienne thought. She held out a hand and Jaime looked at it, still looking near-petrified.

“You realise I can’t dance too well with a cane?” he asked.

“I wasn’t expecting anything fancy.” Most couples on the floor just had their arms around each other, just swaying a little. “I just want to dance with you.”

He nodded, and then smiled, relaxing. He took her hand, but turned to thread his stumped arm through her elbow, so that he might use his hand on his cane. Together, they made their way through the crowd to the dance floor.

They pressed their way to the middle and stood for a moment, facing each other.

“We’ve never danced together,” Jaime said.

“No.”

“Too much war going on, I suppose. Too much death. Dancing is for happy times.”

“You seem happy now.”

“I am,” he nodded. “Today has been so beautiful.”

“Yes,” Brienne agreed. She looked over at Dyanne and Sophey, wrapped in each other, dancing with their eyes on each others eyes. They were beautiful, both of them. Their love was the most beautiful thing in this world.

She took Jaime in her arms, pulled him close. She felt the breath leave his body in a long sigh. He put his head on her shoulder. They moved together, vaguely in time with the music.

Jaime was warm; his breath was on her neck and his right arm was around her waist. His chest moved against her breasts as he breathed.

The Summer Islanders played a sweet, slow song. Melodic and hopeful. Brienne felt every note of the fiddle creep over her skin, every pluck of the harp tug at her heart. Every blast of the horn sang in her ears. And there was Jaime’s warmth and Jaime’s breath. Jaime’s eyes on hers, and the soft curve of his lips as he smiled at her. She smiled, too.

Across the room, Addam watched them, Sapphire rocking in his arms. His eyes were soft.

Brienne held Jaime tighter. He did not feel so small in her arms now, not so broken, not so frail. He did not feel so dangerous now, either. He felt comfortable. Strong. He felt _good_.

His arm around her back shifted a little lower. His thigh brushed hers as they moved. She could feel the warmth of his skin through his clothes.

Jaime was alive. He was here. He was real.

The song finished, and Brienne looked up. Sapphire was asleep in Addam’s arms.

“I should go,” she said to Jaime. “Sapphire is like to wake a fair few times in the night. I need to get sleep where I can.”

“Of course,” he said through a thick throat.

He let go of her and stepped back, and Brienne felt … bereft. Suddenly a little cold and a little dizzy. The ale she had drunk had gone to her head.

“I could use some help,” she said.

He blinked. “Help?”

“Overnight. If you want to.”

“Oh.” Jaime nodded. “Yes, I want to.”

“Come on, then.”

She pushed back through the crowd, Jaime just behind her, back to Addam and the sleeping Sapphire.

“Are you leaving?” Addam asked, looking between the two of them.

“Yes,” Brienne said. “Jaime … Jaime too.”

She looked down at him, trying to read his eyes. But he smiled.

“Good,” Addam said. “That sounds good.”

He passed Sapphire to her gingerly, careful not to wake the sleeping babe. He’d wrapped her in his cloak to keep her warm, and it smelled of him. Brienne had a pang of longing, and she lifted her head to ask him to come with them.

He shook his head, as if he knew what she was going to say. “Goodnight,” he said, with a soft smile, and turned away.

Brienne watched him go between the tables, so handsome in his velvet doublet and embroidered breeches. Her heart ached.

Outside, a fine rain fell. Jaime was careful on the drawbridge out of Maegor’s; it could be slippery when it was wet. Brienne took his arm, clasping his stump in her hand. Somehow that felt more intimate than holding hands.

Neither of them spoke.

In the White Sword Tower, there were no sounds other than their breathing. They mounted the stairs slowly. Unhurried. Still in silence.

The Lord Commander’s chambers were cold and dark – she’d not been back to light a fire, nor light a candle since she left this morning in a rush to get to training.

The bed was unmade, too, the furs in disarray.

Jaime hovered at the threshold of the bedchamber while Brienne lay Sapphire on the bed. She lit some candles, cleaned the grate. Lay some kindling, set it alight.

Jaime watched – he seemed all but frozen. Leaning on his cane. The firelight danced on his face. In his eyes.

Brienne changed Sapphire’s napkin, which woke her, grumpy and wailing. “Find her nightshift?” Brienne asked Jaime. “I think it’s in the cot?”

That seemed to snap him out of his reverie. He limped to the cot, rummaged through the blankets and came up with the nightshift. Brought it to the bed. His arm brushed Brienne’s as he leaned over to lay it out. Their eyes met. Burning.

“She’s exhausted,” he said.

Brienne smiled. “She’s had lots of fun tonight.”

They dressed their babe together, and then Brienne sat on the bed to feed her. Sapphire suckled eagerly and without interruption – it seemed that her nose had cleared a little at least. Jaime brought a chair to the hearth and sat down to tend the fire, adding some wood, making sure it caught. Watching the flames.

Sapphire fell back to sleep quickly, falling off Brienne’s teat with a contented little sigh. Brienne wiped milk from her little cheek and stood to rock her. Her beautiful babe, her pretty pale pink lips still making a sucking motion.

Brienne lowered her into the cot. Slowly. Slowly. Making sure her back touched the mattress imperceptibly slowly. Pulling her hands from under her as delicately as she could, a finger at a time. Rubbing Sapphire’s back until she was sure she was settled. Tucking her in with a soft woollen blanket.

She turned to look at Jaime.

He sat with his back to her, still staring into the flames, a poker in his hand. His face was soft, and a smile played at the corner of his lips.

She went to him. Reached for him. Stroked his hair softly, away from his scar, away from his missing ear. He turned to her with that devastating smile of his, that one that was like looking into the sun. He was so beautiful. She let her fingers trail down to the dimples in his cheeks.

“Jaime …” she whispered.

He stood up and kissed her. His lips were so soft against hers, so soft they almost hurt. It felt like their first kiss, but it was nothing like their first kiss – there was none of that drunken desperation, none of that clumsy fumbling and stumbling and missing each other’s mouths.

This was the first kiss of who they were _now_. He took her breath away with it – there was such strength there. It seemed a strange thing, an unromantic thing, to call a kiss _strong,_ but Brienne realised that Jaime had never been strong before. He had been small and he’d been brittle … just a façade of a man over a black hole of rage and pain and self-hate.

She was different, too. Not that unloved, rejected half-child still smarting over the teasing of yet another man. She was a woman, now, a grown woman who had borne a child and taken lovers. Dealt with heartbreak, cried with friends, inspired other women to be like her.

They were not the same two people at all.

They kissed, and kissed again. Their eyes meltingly soft on each other’s eyes, hardly even closing them when their lips came together, wanting to drown together in the feelings.

Brienne’s hands roamed over his back, his ribs, his chest, drifting almost aimlessly up to the tie at the neck of his tunic. He stood back and gazed at her as she untied it, and this time, she gazed back. This time, she let him undo hers, too, let his hand stroke the strip of skin revealed between the ties once he’d pulled them open. Between her milk-swollen breasts, over her soft swell of belly.

“I love you,” he said, and it was like the first time he’d said it. It was the first time she’d believed it, the first time she had believed that if Cersei rose from the dead, he would not have gone to her.

What would that burning, steaming, raging force of hatred have to offer him now? Jaime was a man all by himself, he needed no other half to his soul. He had no need for fate, for all that born-together-die-together nonsense. Jaime got to choose who he loved.

He loved Brienne.

He loved her with his mouth, open and breathing on her collarbone, kissing and tasting her skin with his tongue. He loved her with his hand, pushing her shirt off her shoulder, looking at her body as though he’d never seen it before. He loved her with his body, too, warm against hers. Stopping to pull his tunic over his head and holding her, just holding her, skin and hair and hearts thudding against each other.

They moved towards the bed together, staring at each other so intensely it felt as though they were making love with their eyes.

He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her down to straddle him. He kissed all over her breasts, over her neck, his hand splayed on her spine. He sucked her nipples into the wet, fluttering heat of his mouth to love them with his tongue.

They sat there for a long while, wrapped around each other. Kissing, kissing. Breathing. Moving together. Hungry and hot but not hurried, the heat of the fire licking their bare skin. Still, they couldn’t stop staring at each other, eyes half-lidded now.

It had never been like this. Not at Winterfell, not when they were with Addam, either. Brienne felt filled with Jaime, like she’d absorbed him through her very skin. He was part of her body, beating inside her like her heart, quivering in her belly like her guts. She was part of him, too, the blood in his veins and the air in his lungs. This was what loving Jaime should have been.

She stood up. Stood back to get some air, tugging the laces on her breeches, shoving them off her hips. Jaime followed suit, and there they both were. Looking at each other’s naked bodies, her standing and him sitting before her, like in the baths at Harrenhal.

Different bodies. Brienne’s scarred by a bear, by a babe as well. Milk-fat on her thighs and her belly loose from her pregnancy. Jaime’s scarred by his choices, bones shattered, healed twisted. But his eyes … his eyes were not so fevered, so full of pain. His eyes were calm and still.

It felt so new; they stretched out beside each other on the furs to explore as though each touch was something fresh. Brienne rolled him on his back to cover him with kisses, burying her nose in his chest hair, in the trail of hair that passed over his belly. In the thatch above his cock. He threaded his fingers into her hair and lay back sighing, his toes curling in the furs.

She took his cock in her mouth and loved him without shame, as she’d always wanted to. Without regret. Without fear. Jaime moaned loudly and writhed beneath her, his belly tense, his cock full and throbbing on her tongue.

He pulled her away lest he come too soon, and, leisurely, they moved into position to make love.

After all the positions they had got themselves into with Addam, this seemed so sparse. So simple. But it was all they needed.

Jaime rolled on top of Brienne, lay between her legs and slid inside her. They both sighed at the feeling – Brienne lifted her legs and tilted her pelvis so he could go in _deep_.

He didn’t thrust. The feeling was pleasurable in the extreme, but somehow this wasn’t about achieving climax. It was about Jaime inside Brienne, about Brienne trusting Jaime, about them becoming themselves. Together.

They lay that way for the longest time. Eyes locked on each other. Breathing each other’s breath. Kissing. Breaking apart. Kissing again. Just holding each other, loving each other the way they should have done before.

It was Brienne who started them moving – a tide of desire rose in her that she could no longer ignore. A slow, easy grind of her pelvis, almost circular in motion, that pressed her needy clit against his pubic bone, that caught and rubbed his cock in the sweet, wet, deep places inside her womanhood that filled her with pure pleasure.

She arched off the pillows and grasped at his arse as she moved, wanting more, and more and more of him. He gave it to her, thrusting up tight to her clit as she rolled beneath him, again. Again. Again … again … ohhh …

The pleasure tore through her body in a cramping wave – toes pointing, thighs squeezing, belly tense and hard and … she bit her lip to stifle her cries and Jaime kissed her. And kissed her and kissed her again.

“I love you,” he told her when she was a boneless whimpering mess on the pillows. Her sex still shuddering – ever-diminishing ripples around his cock.

“I love you, too,” she panted when she’d remembered how to speak.

Then Jaime was surging above her, sending echoes of her pleasure racing up her spine. Grasping her hip with his good hand, his stump wrapped beneath her waist.

“Gods,” he cried through a strangled throat. Then “Gods … _gods_!”

He pulled out with a harsh breath of surrender, grasping his cock in his hand as he spent himself on the furs by her hip.

They clung to each other, panting. Shuddering. Jaime shifted upward to press his forehead against Brienne’s.

He kissed her. Another change – the first time they lay together in Winterfell the aftermath had been awkward. The bright flare of passion had dissipated so quickly. Jaime had teased her about the blood from her maidenhead on his cock. Brienne had been sore and frustrated and a little bewildered.

He had been beautiful, but he hadn’t been kind.

Now, he didn’t seem able to let her go. He kissed her again. Held her face in his palm as though he were afraid this was all a dream.

But he didn’t feel the need to tease her or crack a joke, or downright insult her. He was content to lie atop her, let her stroke up and down his back while his cock softened against her belly.

“That was …” he didn’t seem to have the words, but Brienne knew what he meant anyway.

“It was.”

“I’ve never … not _ever_ …” He shook his head and grinned.

He got up to poke the fire, to find a cloth to clean his seed from the furs. Brienne lay back and watched him, naked and smiling.

Then, wordless, still holding each other, they pulled the furs over themselves and lay on the pillows. Rolled on their sides to look at each other.

Jaime gazed at Brienne and Brienne gazed at Jaime until she finally fell asleep. It was only then as she dozed off that she realised neither the mark on his chest or the ones on her wrists had appeared once while they made love.

When she woke up, he was gone.

The room was dark, and cold. Sapphire was crying. The fire in the grate had gone out completely. Not even an ember remained. How long had she slept?

Brienne sat up. The furs slid down her breasts and a chill went through her body. She got up and threw on her robe.

She picked Sapphire out of the cot. Wiped her nose and put her to her breast. There was no sign of Jaime.

An icy hand of terror gripped her heart. He had gone. He had _left_.

After everything. After making love like _that_ , he had left her. Truly?

But as she turned around to see where her clothes were, she noticed it. Something crawling on the furs. Then another. And another. All over Jaime’s side of the bed, dozens of them. Gleaming and black, skittering in and out of the furs. The sheets. The pillow.

His side of the bed was covered with crabs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many many apologies for the evil cliffhanger. I hope you don't mind waiting two weeks for the resolution!
> 
> Many many thanks to CaptainTarthister this week for helping me so much. This has been a difficult chapter to get right as it was so important, for obvious reasons. I hope I've managed it.
> 
> While you wait, how about staying in the mood by listening to the faaaaabulous [Us Without Each Other playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/32FUnK5tIi3Hqu9rTvjeok)? Big thanks to my lovely reader who keeps it up to date. 
> 
> If you'd like to get some teasers and updates for this story and anything else that emerges from my twisted brain, then please do consider following me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/).


	10. You Sound Quite Jealous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You sound quite jealous."  
> "I do, don't I?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Banner by the lovely [@WakingDreams82](https://twitter.com/WakingDreams82) on Twitter.

Jaime woke up because there was something on his face.

Light. Gentle. At first, he thought it was Sapphire, her hand on his cheek. Or maybe Brienne, trying to wake him for more lovemaking. He smiled softly as it moved into his beard.

Something else scuttled up his chest. Something cold and hard. That was _not_ a hand. Jaime opened his eyes.

There, on his chest hair, right between his nipples, sat a crab. For a heartbeat, he was too paralysed to move. The thing was black, shining black, and its claws gleamed in the candlelight as it rushed towards his face.

Jaime let out a hoarse cry and threw himself backwards, batting at the crab with his stump. Funny how even after all these years he still instinctively went for things with his non-existent right hand.

There was another on his leg beneath the furs, another on his shoulder. And what had he felt on his face?

They were everywhere. Jaime jumped out of bed, forgetting that he needed his cane, stumbling and yelling and landing on his arse.

“Brienne!” he yelled. “Brienne, get up!”

Brienne didn’t respond. She didn’t so much as stir. There were crabs all over her, too. Crawling in her hair, on her face. One crawled out of her snoring mouth.

“ _Brienne_!”

“She can’t hear you.”

Jaime span around – the voice came from behind him.

There was a girl.

A blonde, with thin features and a penetrating gaze. She sat atop Sapphire’s cot, crouched on the bars like a bird of prey. Unmoving. 

Jaime gaped. He hardly dared breathe. Sapphire lay underneath her, covered by a blanket, sucking her thumb. Thankfully, there were no crabs on her. He didn’t think he could bear to see that.

Every paternal instinct he had made him want to rush to his daughter, pull her from her cot and hold her close and shield her from...

“Who are you?”

The girl didn’t reply. She smiled, a spitless, wolfish grin that didn’t touch her eyes.

“I don’t recognise you?”

The girl nodded. “Of course you don’t.”

“Are you here to kill me?”

The girl nodded again. “Brienne and the babe, too.”

Jaime blanched. “Don’t. Please. Not them, not –”

“Don’t worry, I can’t do it. I tried … I tried _so_ hard. For weeks. Moons.”

Moons? His eyes went back to Sapphire, asleep in her cot. “I take it that you’re Arya Stark, aren’t you?”

She put her hand to her face. Pulled at something that looked physical, but also wasn’t physical.

She changed. Her face, but also her hair. Her body, her stance. Her voice.

She was a young woman still, but skinny. Short. Tiny. Jaime did not remember Arya Stark from King’s Landing, not at all, and he had only been vaguely aware of her at Winterfell those many years later when he’d gone north to fight the dead. She kept to herself, kept to the shadows, Jaime recalled.

Now he saw she had her father’s look about her, which was unfortunate. It seemed Ned Stark’s miserable countenance haunted Jaime even from the grave.

The grave was about right. Arya looked fresh dug up – filthy hair, sallow skin, yellow teeth. And her eyes! Jaime couldn’t stop looking at them. Sometimes they seemed white – blinded and thick. Other times wild and bloodshot. Sometimes they poured with blood as if there were nothing left but a socket.

“You’re a monster!” Jaime breathed.

Arya shuddered. In her body, her frail bones popped and snapped as if she was broken all over. She hissed. “This world makes monsters of us all.”

Jaime sucked a breath in between his teeth. “Some of us more than others, though.”

“Maybe,” Arya agreed.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Both of them watched the other – if they’d had swords, they would be circling each other now.

“Why are you here?” Jaime asked eventually. A jab to test her defences.

“I’m here to kill you.” She brought her hand to her mouth. Bit down on the filthy skin of her knuckles, hard. She let out a sound, the groan of a wounded animal. “I _have_ to kill you. I need to kill you so much. It hurts. It _itches_ …”

Jaime watched her, watched those foul yellow teeth gnaw until they broke the thin skin. Her blood flowed out thick and dark. Half coagulated. “You want to kill us … but … you can’t?”

Behind him, Brienne cried out. Jaime span around, his heart in his mouth, expecting to see her injured, or threatened, but …

She was making love. She was making love to _him_. It was them … earlier in the evening, wrapped in each other on the furs, him on top of her with her legs around him, sweating from the fire burning bright and hard and hot in the grate. They were kissing; she was crying into his mouth. She’d just come to her pleasure.

Gods, what was this?

A hysterical part of Jaime wanted to laugh. He’d always thought himself a beautiful man, and the act of love had always felt like him at his best – lithe and fit and golden and perfect. Imagine his horror to discover he looked as every other man he’d seen in the act did – red in the face, teeth bared, his arse going nineteen-to-the-dozen between Brienne’s thighs.

And dear _gods_ – was that he face he made when he came?! How could he ever look Brienne and Addam in the eye again?

“Make it _stop!_ ” cried Arya. He tore his eyes away from his eye-rolling self squirting seed all over the furs to see the girl clutching at her head.

“You – you’re not doing this?!” He had assumed that she was like Bran, that she could move the flow of time, show him things. He’d assumed that’s what she was doing now.

“It’s everywhere!” she cried now.

“What – this?” He turned back. Brienne was asleep again, crabs crawling all over her while she did. He blinked in surprise. What was happening?

“You need to make it stop,” Arya begged again.

“I – I didn’t do that. I’m not doing anything – you think I can do _that_? I’m not your brother.”

Arya clutched at her head – Jaime stepped closer, almost wanting to comfort her. She was little more than a child. A traumatised child, Brienne had called her.

As soon as his foot touched the floor, Arya’s head snapped up, that feral, murderous look back on her pallid face. “You _killed_ Bran!”

“I had to. He –”

“You killed him!”

Jaime hung his head. Fuck it … he had no need of Lannister pride now – let the wolf judge the lion. “Your brother killed everyone in King’s Landing. Half a million people. Froze them all where they stood until they turned to dust.”

Arya laughed, a humourless horror of a laugh that tinkled with madness. Somehow it was difficult to imagine Ned doing _that._ She jumped down from Sapphire’s cot. Looked up at Jaime with those terrible eyes.

“I had to stop him,” Jaime told her. “You think a man like that, with powers capable of _that_ should live? Truly?”

Arya didn’t answer. She wrung her hands in front of her. Continued to stare at him with those fevered eyes.

“Besides,” he said, not looking away even though his skin tried to crawl off his bones. “I didn’t do such a good job, did I? I don’t think I killed him at all.”

“‘Killed’ is the wrong word,” she admitted, her voice quavering in her throat. Her hand went to the thing at her belt, that long, black claw. She wore it like a sword. Her hand jittered over it, almost as if it were too hot to touch and yet she was compelled to touch it anyway.

“What is that?” Jaime asked. Up close, the thing looked delicate, like a well-placed poke would crack it in two. It shone iridescent, akin to the chitin of an insect.

Arya let out a long, keening groan. “It’s my misery. My burden. My brother. Beast and tree and man. Boy, man, wolf, raven. Crab.” By her sides, her fingers flickered madly. She repeated herself, again and again. “Boy, man, wolf, raven, crab. Boy, man, wolf, raven, crab. All you. All you. You have to die, you have to die.”

“What happened to you?” he asked.

She didn’t answer. Instead, she scampered behind him, her footsteps so silent on the rushes he began to wonder if she was only a vision. She stood over Brienne’s sleeping form, a hand on the pillow beside her head.

“Don’t –” Jaime said. Insinctively, his eyes darted to Oathkeeper, in Brienne’s scabbard on her armour stand. Could he get to it fast enough? Could he –?

“I should have gone with her,” Arya said. Brienne snored.

“What?”

“When she found me in the Vale. She fought the Hound. I ran and hid and then I ran away. I should have gone with her. I wonder if things would be different?”

“She would have kept you safe.”

“How could I have believed that? I didn’t know her, I didn’t believe her. She had _your_ sword.”

Curse his father and his need to adorn everything with lions. “I didn’t think of that when I gave it to her.”

“She would have taught me to fight. I could have been a knight. Maybe … a knight like her and not – not like _this_.”

“Is that what you wanted?”

“What I wanted? How did I know? Everyone died,” she said, then. “Everyone died horribly.”

Jaime looked away. “I know.”

“I can’t think of my mother,” Arya said, her voice cracking. “My mother, getting her throat cut. I can’t think of Robb … nor my father, or Jory … or Rodrick Cassel. The children I played with at Winterfell, the servants that were there all my life. My Septa … all of them are dead.”

All of those people, all of her family. All of her security and comfort, and all she thought she knew about the world. She had just been a girl, a small girl like Myrcella, like Sapphire would soon be. Like the children he looked after every day. No different at all.

Jaime thought of Tommen, then, of Tommen jumping out of the window after seeing the Sept destroyed. Of his kind green eyes, his soft voice. His little hands, how they had been as a child. How his hair had been the same colour as Sapphire’s. How tormented must his son have felt to do that? How alone in his last moments, realising the true horror of what Cersei had done.

Children … Just children. Children weren’t meant to see those things. They weren’t meant to have their families murdered in front of them, to have the atrocities of war done before their eyes.

“At Winterfell,” Jaime said. “I told your sister that I wouldn’t apologise for my part in the war. I told her I’d do it all again.”

“I know.”

Was Arya there? He couldn’t remember. “Now … now I apologise. I regret it, all of it.”

Arya laughed. A shrill, near-hysterical laugh.

“I know. It’s too late, and it’s pathetic. Apologies are nothing, less than air. But … things … things are different now. Brienne bore me a child, a daughter. A child I can hold, a child I can be a father to. Her name is Sapphire, and – and she calls me Papa … and her _smile_ … it feels like a sunrise. Before her, I … I did not understand children, or childhood, how beautiful and special it should be. Lannisters … I was never a child, I was always a Lannister, which is probably why I was playing at fucking my sister when we were all of eight.”

Arya was silent now. Her eyes shifted from white to red.

“I thought that was family. That we were close, that our love was superior to every other kind of family’s out there, I truly did. My House. My family. But we were never a family, not the way you were. Not the way Brienne was, not the way we are now, she and I and Sapphire and Addam.”

No sooner had he said Addam’s name than he was watching the three of them fuck on the bed – Brienne in the middle with Addam spooned up behind her. Jaime curled around them both with his head between Brienne’s legs.

He had a pang – he missed this. He missed this so much. The mark of the tree flared to life across his chest as he watched.

“It doesn’t change anything, but I hope that it explains it, at least a little.”

Arya shrank away, her hands going to her head again. She could not look at the figures on the bed, which was probably for the best. Addam’s hairy arse was enough to traumatise the poor girl into an early grave.

“Being with Brienne,” he continued, watching the very woman he was talking about cry out at the feeling of his tongue. “Being with Brienne has changed everything. Perhaps … perhaps it would change things for you, too?”

Arya hissed at him. “You think I want part of this? You’re disgusting!”

“Not _this_!” Jaime cried. “Gods – I’m not recruiting an army for my bedchamber. But … I can feel you. Something about you: the way I feel my followers. You – you’re one of us, are you not?”

The copulating figures on the bed vanished, and again there was just Brienne, rolled on her side now, still snoring.

“What do you mean?” Arya snapped.

Jaime took a breath. Let her feelings flow over him. “Oh!” he said with a smile. “Before the battle at Winterfell. You and … Robert’s bastard? And … on a ship? A few days out from White Harbour, there was a boy as well. A Ghiscari boy wearing a necklace of coins and a smile that made you smile.”

“Arnos …” Arya whispered. “How … how do you know?”

“You had fun. You laughed together. You felt like a woman grown, and you thought it was good. You thought you were going to be happy.”

As he watched, Arya’s eyes turned from blinded white to a deep, stormy grey.

“Yes,” he begged. “Arya. Come on …. Come with us. You don’t need to do this.”

Then, in a rush, her wild, bleeding eyes were back, and she let out a shriek so fearsome Jaime felt a chill go up his spine. Her hand flew to the claw on her belt, and she pulled it out, as quick as drawing a sword. Shoved the point of it under Brienne’s chin. Brienne didn’t stir.

“No!” Jaime cried. “Not Brienne. Please.”

Arya whined. Grimaced. Her hands shook, like she was fighting with them. Fighting with her own body.

“He wants you dead. He _needs_ it.”

Jaime saw it then, saw that Bran had tried to do to her what he had done to Podrick, what he had done to the Kingsguard to make them his Ravens. He had near torn her mind apart to do it – his sister, his own sister!

Perhaps the Starks were not so perfect, after all.

Arya had her eyes screwed shut now, tight shut. Her skin was smoking. She leaned on the claw for all she was worth, her cry turning to a shrill scream. Louder and louder and louder until it seemed to Jaime as though the whole keep was filled with it.

Suddenly, the claw shattered. Like glass, into powder. Like it was never there. The candles all went out, the fire in the hearth too. Arya fell to the floor, sobbing, stinking, wretched. Not a monster but a broken girl, crushed and crushed again.

Jaime found his cane. Pulled some breeches on that were almost definitely Brienne’s.

“Come on,” he whispered softly. He was talking to Myrcella, to Tommen. To Sapphire, too. To the Lady of Winterfell, who he hadn’t been able to apologise to. To her mother, for failing his oath to protect her girls.

Arya stood. Sniffled, rubbed her eyes with her fists. There was a runner of snot hanging from her nose, so Jaime found a handkerchief. Waited patiently while she blew her nose.

“Come with me,” he said. She looked up at him with a trembling lip and reached for him with trembling hands. She linked arms with him. He patted the back of her hand. “I’m slow with my cane.”

“I – I could help you,” she said. Soft.

Together, they made their way down the stairs of the White Sword Tower, out into the rain. They walked silently together, arm in arm, through the middle bailey. Through the portcullis into the outer yard. Past the Sept, past the stables. Past the godswood, where the weirwoods stood long silent.

The throne room was dark and quiet. It had stopped raining, or maybe it never rained in here. Jaime wasn’t sure.

Arya stood behind him, all but trembling. Shivering in the cold, perhaps – she was tiny, and her clothes were thin and ragged.

“It – it’s the tree,” she whispered. “I dreamed about the tree.”

Jaime nodded – so many of his followers had told him the same thing. Had he himself not seen it everywhere for so, so long?

Arya left his side, tiptoeing gingerly through the fallen petals. The room was still decorated from Dyanne and Sophey’s wedding, and the garlands of blue flowers did not so much as stir as Arya passed them. She was impossibly light on her feet.

“It’s really real,” she whispered. “I kept it with me. So long …”

She stood beneath the perfect black of its limbs, reaching out a hand to touch one of the lowermost branches. The tree shuddered at her touch, and something made Jaime feel distinctly nauseous. Petals fell beneath Arya’s fingers. But not the pretty blossom that he himself made when he got close to the tree. Instead, the petals withered at her touch, fell dried and dead and crisped at her feet.

Arya looked dismayed.

“My brother …” she whispered.

Jaime approached, his cane clacking loudly on the tiles. Stood at her shoulder.

The tree recoiled from Arya’s touch, but it didn’t want to, Jaime felt. It wanted her to be one of them. She could be one of them, but there was something … something … something sick and rotten still inside her.

“What happened?” Jaime asked. His voice rustled the tree, hushed though it was. “Can you tell me?”

Arya shook her head. She wrapped herself in her arms and shrank away from Jaime again.

“Can you … show me?” he pressed. “The way Bran does?”

“I have nothing of his abilities!”

But Jaime did not think that was true. It hadn’t been him conjuring all those images of the past, the lovemaking between him and Brienne, and then him and Addam and Brienne.

Tentatively, he reached for Arya. Held out his hand, palm up – an invitation. He wanted to take her story, take her burden. To be the person who _knew_.

She looked at his hand for a long moment, as did he. The old sword-callouses, softened now but permanent. The burn on his wrist where he’d stumbled while carrying a kettle of porridge last moon. The reddened skin from washing Sapphire’s napkins, day after day.

It looked like the hand of a man who had lived life. A real life.

Arya took it.

“West,” she whispered. “I wanted to know what was west of Westeros.”

And suddenly, Jaime could see it. Feel the rise and fall of a deck beneath his feet, smell the salt air and the oil on the ropes. Hear the flap of the sails, the calls of the sailors. He was there, he was with her. He felt her excitement and her pride.

They were both smiling.

He saw days of sailing, a few storms, meals with the crew, meals in her cabin. Leaning over the deck to watch the huge plumes of water surge against the boat, laughing with the boy she’d spoken of, the Ghiscari with the necklace made of coins.

“Arnos,” Arya whispered.

Jaime nodded. Always Arya smiled. Always she felt good – excited, free. He saw nights on end with Arnos, learning and exploring. Finding things she had never known about, enjoying them. Keeping them for herself.

But then, they’d sighted land, and then, the dreams began.

He saw her wake in the night, sometimes with Arnos, sometimes alone. Gasping. Crying. Haunted.

He saw her run onto the deck in her sleeping shift, sweating and wild-eyed. Screaming at the crew to change course, telling them they needed to turn back.

He saw the crew going downhill, too. Itchy skin, bitten fingernails, lips chewed raw. Men waking in their hammocks screaming. He saw Arya fucking Arnos for all she was worth, a hand on his throat. Squeezing, squeezing.

He saw the ship adrift. Becalmed … a ghost ship. Men running about the decks, pulling their hair out, pulling each other apart to find sweet juicy meat to eat. Arya too, covered in blood. Chewing on something red and sticky that tasted of iron.

He saw her on the deck, raging with thirst and laughing through cracked lips, barely able to lift her head.

“The tree …” she whispered as she lay there. “The tree … please, the tree.”

The ship had run aground, its hull split open on some volcanic beach. Jaime saw Arya crawl along the dull black sand, her fingers like claws as they gripped for purchase, her mouth moving without sound. Everyone else was dead.

Ahead of her, a figure in black floated. Stopping to let her catch up. Floating away.

Jaime knew that figure. He had seen it on the outskirts of King’s Landing, the day they had come to the city. The day they had found all the dead, frozen people.

It was Bran.

“Please …” Arya groaned from her parched throat. “Please I can’t …”

Bran paid no heed. What did he care for his sister’s pain? What did he care for anyone’s? He compelled her to crawl down the beach, crawl and crawl and crawl. Hours. Arya had been half-mad by the time she had finished. Jaime too – he was in her head, hearing her singing songs, having wild hallucinations, talked to by her father, her mother, jeered by Sansa. And a strange dream where a direwolf threw stones at her.

Bran led her to a cave. A foul, wet cave that stank of rotten seaweed, rotten fish.

The sky was dark by then, and Arya couldn’t see anything. Didn’t want to go inside, but still, Bran forced her on.

He dragged her into the disgusting wet depths of the cave, through tunnels in the rock that were barely wide enough for her shoulders to fit through, spaces so tight she could scarcely expand her ribs to breathe.

Then, he made her dig.

Hours she was at that, too. Consumed by the pain of it, the cold of the damp earth, the screaming heat of her bleeding fingers. The desperation of her own thirst.

But she found it. It was there.

The sun had risen as she had lifted it from the earth, and Jaime followed her as she wriggled out the way she came. Held the thing aloft in the burning, red-stained dawn.

It was the claw she had carried on her belt, the one that had exploded into nothing in Brienne’s bedchamber.

Bran had looked pleased – if he were capable of such an expression.

After that, things got confusing. It was as though Arya was little more than an animal. All Jaime got were instincts – hunger, pain, confusion, terror, the instinct to attack.

As moons passed in her mind’s eye, Jaime saw more and more. Bran had compelled her to walk all the way back to Westeros.

He saw her sleeping in ditches, making burrows for herself from leaves. Scavenging for meat, raw or cooked, snarling at anyone or anything that came too close. Killing them, eating them too, sometimes.

He saw her dreams, too, in the last part of Arya that was still herself, buried deep in her mind. There, she dreamed and dreamed and dreamed.

Blue flowers, sweet and fragrant, petals spinning in the air. The tree, whispering, soothing, gentle. Its touch was as sweet as Arnos’s fingers. As sweet as her mother’s kiss. It fed her. Nourished her. Kept her safe. Bran had not touched that part of her, not once.

Bran had torn the rest of her mind to pieces though. Just the way he had done to Podrick, to the Ravens. Broken it down and filled it with one thought – death. Kill.

Kill Jaime Lannister.

Kill Brienne of Tarth.

Kill Addam Marbrand.

Kill Sapphire Storm.

Kill them, kill them, kill them. Kill them all.

Only … the part of her mind that dreamed of the tree was too strong. She had arrived in the city, lived here for moons, her mind fighting with itself. Tormenting her.

Jaime squeezed her hand. He was crying. Arya was, too.

“We need to get him out of you,” he whispered. “We need to stop this.”

“How?” she begged.

Jaime stood up. He untied his tunic. Dropped it to the floor. Pulled at the laces on his breeches.

Arya looked a little uncertain. Panicked. Quite repulsed.

“Not like _that_ ,” Jaime reassured her with a sigh. His golden lion days really _were_ done. “This is _not_ a sex cult.”

He disrobed nonetheless, stepping up once again into the embrace of the tree.

The branches caught him, held him gently. He closed his eyes.

He could feel every one of his followers – some asleep, some awake, some talking or laughing or making love. He could feel them feel _him_ , too. Feel the call of the tree.

One by one, they got up. Woke up. Put clothes and boots and hats and cloaks on. Filtered out of the towers and the barracks and the holdfast and the kitchen keep. Hailed each other, laughed and joked along the way.

And then, one by one, they entered the throne room. A smile breaking out on each of their faces when they saw Jaime in the tree. One by one, they caught sight of Arya, too.

Sad, bedraggled child-woman that she was, sitting forlorn and lost on the steps. One by one, Jaime’s people approached her. Stood around her, linking arms. Embracing each other.

They knew what to do. Of course they did.

The song rose through the air, throbbing and joyous. The song of healing, the song of togetherness. The song of welcome. Jaime found it the most beautiful thing he had ever heard. Like Sapphire’s laughter, like when she called him Papa. Like the soft, long sigh Brienne let out as he slid inside her. The sounds of love.

Jaime looked through the crowd, trying to see if Brienne or Addam were there. He couldn’t see either of them, but the group was so big. Maybe they were in the scrum around Arya, he thought. It would be hard to spot them there.

Then, the crowd parted and the singing stopped. One by one, smiling, Jaime’s followers embraced Arya, welcoming her to the city, promising her that she was better now, that the hurt inside her was all gone.

Arya looked a little uncertain, a little shocked and dizzy, but she was smiling, too. Her huge grey eyes full of tears. She accepted each of the embraces gratefully, her arms going around people, her hands squeezing their backs, her smile growing wider and wider.

She turned to look at Jaime with such joy in her eyes he couldn’t help but cry too. Bran was gone … her mind was healed. He could never hurt her again while she was with them.

Just then, he caught sight of Brienne, coming through the doors of the throne room. Her face pale, her eyes huge. Her mouth open. Addam was behind her, holding Sapphire snuggled to his chest and sucking her thumb.

Jaime smiled at them.

He tried to stand, to go to them, to greet them, but he couldn’t. The branches wrapped around him held him fast. Squeezed him. Another snaked about his waist even as he tried to pull himself free.

Panic rose in his chest – the tree would not let him go! This had never happened before. Never.

Brienne and Addam were lost in the throng now, he couldn’t see them. Couldn’t attract their attention.

As he frantically searched with his eyes, the tree twisted around him even tighter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember I apologised for the cliffhanger last time? Well, seems like I did it again! Very sorry. More to follow in two weeks!
> 
> Thanks to CaptainTarthister for all the endless discussion I have put her through this week, and also for reading and suggesting and being a willing guinea pig for my crazed ravings. I don't deserve her, I really don't.
> 
> While you recover, how about checking out the faaaaabulous [Us Without Each Other playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/32FUnK5tIi3Hqu9rTvjeok)? Big thanks to my lovely reader who keeps it up to date. 
> 
> If you'd like to get some teasers and updates for this story and anything else that emerges from my twisted brain, then please do consider following me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Thanks, see you in a fortnight for more of this!


	11. You're A Virgin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "That's ... a statement. About the present."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Banner by the lovely [@WakingDreams82](https://twitter.com/WakingDreams82) on Twitter.

Brienne banged on Addam’s door.

Sapphire cried. Brienne’s heart hammered in her chest, and she banged and banged again.

Addam opened the door, bleary-eyed and confused. He was undressed, just in smallclothes.

“Brienne? What - what’s amiss?” he asked.

“Jaime!” Brienne cried. She pushed past Addam, into the apartment he’d taken above the kitchen keep. She was a little more dressed than he, and she had buckled Oathkeeper to her waist as well. Just in case.

The apartment was a mess, clothes everywhere. A wineskin lay discarded on the floor, another on the table, alongside lots of ale and lots of empty glasses. “Jaime, he –“

“You lay with him tonight?”

She turned around. “Yes. But –”

“I’m glad. I’m pleased for you.”

“But he’s gone. He’s gone and ... there were crabs!”

“Crabs? Jaime has...?” He pointed to his own cock.

“What?!”

“You know. Crabs. Lice, on his...”

Brienne gaped. “You can get lice on your ... _there_?”

“Yes!” Addam looked at her as though he wondered how she could possibly be a woman grown without knowing such a thing.

She waved a hand. This was of no consequence. “No! Jaime has _gone._ We lay together, fell asleep together. When I woke up, he was gone, and ... there were crabs. _Actual_ crabs. In my bed where he had been.”

“I don’t understand. Wh – why would he leave crabs in your bed?” Then, his eyes widened. “Oh, gods. You mean the Crab King. Bran. You think he –”

“Yes!”

“You think Bran took him? How?”

“I don’t know!”

Addam screwed up his brow. He took the still-wailing Sapphire from Brienne. Shushed her and tried to soothe her. “Was his cane still there?”

“H – his cane?” Brienne racked her brains. She hadn’t hung around to do an inventory.

“If he took his cane, it wasn’t any magic that took him, he walked.”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember seeing it or – oh! He took my breeches. His own were still on the floor, but my breeches and the rest of his clothes... they were gone.”

“So he got dressed. Probably he took his cane.”Addam dithered a little before speaking again. “Brienne, are you sure he didn’t ... perhaps ... _leave_?”

Brienne swallowed. Her immediate response was anger, but ... the question was fair, was it not? For someone who had not witnessed the love she had just made with Jaime. “No,” she said, firmly. “Not now. He would not.”

“Twas that good, hmm?”

“He is not the man I lay with at Winterfell.”

Addam looked at her, rather sadly. “I know.”

“And the crabs, Addam.”

“Tis true … the White Sword Tower is not known for its infestation of crabs.”

Just then, outside, a bell began to toll. It was a handbell, the one Brack kept in the entranceway to the throne room. Brienne and Addam ran to the window.

In the yard below, people streamed from every tower, every building, dressed in their nightgowns. The sound of their joyous singing went through the night. They were headed for the throne room – there looked to be a sizeable throng already inside.

“Jaime …” Brienne breathed.

Addam passed Sapphire back to Brienne and grabbed his clothes from the end of his bed. Brienne didn’t wait – she tore down the stairs and back out into the yard.

“What’s happening?” she asked people as they passed. “What happened, is it Jaime?”

No one answered. They filed past her, smiling and singing—arms around each other. They were blissed out, happy, the way they had looked after the wedding. Brienne felt it too, but Jaime … her fear about Jaime … the crabs.

“Please …” she begged.

Addam caught up to her. Took Sapphire once more. He took Brienne’s hand and squeezed her fingers. “Come on. We’ll find him.”

They pushed into the crowd, moving along with them through the vast, arched outer doorway of the throne room.

Inside it was packed with people, most of whom were crowded around someone at the front.

The mood was elated, thrilled. Loving and welcoming.

Brienne didn’t feel it. There was something beneath it all, something screaming at her, a shrill note of something _not right._

She pushed forward, wriggling through the throng, her hand still clasping Addam’s hand, her mind on Jaime, Jaime, Jaime …

 _Jaime_ …

He was in the tree. For a moment, Brienne was flooded with relief – he was here, he was fine, he was alive! But then, she saw his eyes. They were wide … wild. Terrified.

“Jaime!” she called across the room. Her voice was swallowed by the singing, strangled by her own throat. She had a terrible sensation of crushing, as if the people surrounding her pressed in on her body from all sides. Addam’s hand felt like the only safe thing in the world.

She pushed her way to the steps before the tree.

“No!” Jaime said. He lifted his hand, fingers splayed. “Stay back.”

“What?”

“I’m – I can’t get out. It – it’s holding me. I don’t want to risk it taking hold of you, too.”

“The – the tree?” Brienne could see that it was wound tight around him, far tighter than it normally was. His skin was pinched and white where the branches wrapped about him.

He nodded, but the small motion caused the branches to snake further into his hair. Jaime gasped.

“What’s happening?” Addam asked.

“I don’t know,” Jaime said. He sounded as though it was difficult for him to draw breath. “We all healed her, we all healed Arya, and then –”

“Arya?” asked Brienne. She spun around to see – a group of Jaime’s followers, five or six of them, hugging someone, all together. Someone small. Someone smiling. Someone –

Arya Stark. Brienne saw her as the crowd parted a little. The girl was laughing like a child even though she looked like the very visage of the Stranger. Grey skin, matted, filthy hair. Teeth that had not been cleaned for many moons.

Her grey eyes sparkled with life. She looked so happy.

Brienne hit her.

Before she’d had a chance to think, before she’d registered her own impulse, Brienne had pushed through the throng surrounding Arya and backhanded her across the cheek. Hard enough to send the girl sprawling onto her arse.

There were gasps from everyone present. The singing fell silent.

“What did you do?” Brienne demanded. “What did you and that brother of yours do to Jaime?”

A beast raged to life behind Arya’s eyes. She leapt to her feet, crouched before Brienne. Hissed at her like a cat. Cowering and spitting and defensive.

“Brienne!” Jaime called.

Brienne ignored him. Towered over the crouched girl. Drew Oathkeeper from its scabbard. “Make it stop … now!”

“I did nothing!” Arya spat. “He helped me. All these people _helped_.”

“Brienne, stop!” Jaime called. His voice sounded thin. Strangled. “She didn’t do this.”

“Are you certain?” Addam asked. He stayed well back, shielding Sapphire with his body.

“I did nothing!” Arya said again.

“Please Brienne,” Jaime begged. “She’s just as much a victim of Bran as we are. She’s been in his thrall for months – driven to come here, driven to kill us. She didn’t want to do any of this.”

“She threatened us. She threatened Sapphire!” Brienne cried.

“She’s been driven near-mad by Bran. Forced to walk the breadth of a continent.”

“He’s gone now,” Arya said. “He’s not there now. Jaime _helped_ me. I haven’t hurt him. I would not!”

“Then what has happened?” Brienne demanded. “The tree... It’s holding Jaime! Squeezing him, hurting him! It’s never done such a thing before.”

There were shocked exclamations throughout the room. All eyes turned to Jaime.

It was what had happened to Bran, though. When his powers had been thwarted by Jaime’s, his own throne had trapped him. Held him fast and eventually crushed him. He’d killed a city in his attempts to get free.

“It – it’s all right,” Jaime said.

“What?” Brienne yelled. “No, it’s not.”

“Yes.” The branch that held Jaime’s hair sent a tendril about his neck too. Pressed tight to his flesh. “Can you not feel it?”

“Feel what?”

Oh... But then she _could_.

It was like a sweet, melodious breeze. It rippled about the throne room, soothing and soft, like a warm summer morning in Tarth. It felt like Jaime’s love, like his trust, like the honour he truly had.

Brienne closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, she was not in the throne room. Not in King’s Landing, not at all.

She was in a wide, grassy clearing in a forest by a river. For a moment, she thought they were in the Westerlands, back at the hut with Weslar and Kiren living next door. But... It was warm. The trees were different. The grass, too.

This was not anywhere Brienne had been before.

Everyone was there with her. Brack and Marcyn, Ellion and Alara and Nira. Dyanne and Sophey. Maester Quagg and Ireyne. Hundreds of Jaime’s followers milled around, chatting and laughing. The children played in the soft sweet grass – Sapphire among them.

Even Arya, clean and neat and smiling, the sun shining in her dark brown hair, was passing around a platter of Ireyne’s rosewater fudge. She wore a garland of blue flowers about her neck.

Was this a vision of the future?

Brienne looked around for Addam. He wasn’t there.

Jaime was, though. The crowd turned to face him as he entered the clearing, naked as his nameday. But … he wasn’t Jaime.

Brienne’s head swam as she looked at him. He was Jaime, he _was_ , but he had long, thick, rich black curls instead of golden ones. His skin was a different shade, too, darker and more tanned. And … he did not walk with a cane – his legs were whole and unbroken, and his face was unscarred.

Jaime … but not Jaime.

He was Shiqhol na Dhazzi.

As he walked through the clearing, the singing began. Beautiful, aromatic blue flowers started to drift through the air, and then Brienne noticed it.

The tree. It stood at the head of the clearing, bedecked in beads and garlands and the trunk painted with beautiful patterns. At its foot burned incense, candles floating in bowls. Food offerings were laid there too. This was some sort of ritual.

Was this _their_ tree? Or Shiqhol na Dhazzi’s? When was this? Where?

One by one, Jaime began to embrace his followers. Spoke a little with each of them, touched them with tender affection. Thanked them profusely. Each of them hugged him, hard, pressed their faces or their lips to the mark of the tree that blossomed on his chest. The mark grew bigger, more prominent with each touch.

Brienne watched, a little bewildered at first. A little dizzy from the feeling of being here and not here; Jaime, but Shiqhol na Dhazzi, too. She wasn’t even sure if she was herself.

Then, as Jaime drew closer and closer to her, she began to realise.

All of his followers were saying goodbye.

“No!” she cried, but her voice was so _small_! “Jaime, no!”

He turned to her, and for the briefest instant, he was _her_ Jaime again, with his wicked smile and his golden hair. Hers, all hers, all soft skin and lean limbs entwined with hers. The smell of him, the warmth of him, the taste of his breath. He came to her. Enfolded her in his arms and kissed her and kissed her.

“Jaime please … what are you doing?”

He cradled her face in both his hands … _both_ his hands! Kissed her again, slow and sweet. The way she’d always wished he’d kissed her at Winterfell.

“I’m dying,” he told her.

“No!” she cried. “No, you’re not. You’re not, you –”

“I have to. The Old Man of the River needs me. He needs all the love you’ve given to me.” He stroked the mark on his chest with a sensuous finger. “He’s bringing me to The Underwater. That’s what’s happening.”

“He’s killing you? _Crushing_ you?”

Jaime nodded.

“That’s what all of this was for? So you just... die?!”

Tears poured down her face now, thinking of Sapphire, thinking of herself. Of Addam. After all this ... after they had found each other, just tonight!

“Tis an honourable death, is it not?” he whispered between frantic kisses. “One a knight would be proud of?”

“Please, Jaime...”

“Bran must be stopped. I saw what he did to Arya. He’s a god somehow, as the Crab King, or near enough. He can’t be allowed to have that dominion; the Old Man must stop him. _We_ must stop him. That’s what all this love has been for.”

He held her. Held both her hands and pulled her to the tree.

“Give me your love, Brienne. Give it to me that I am not alone in The Underwater.”

They were kissing, then. Kissing and kissing and wound around each other in that way that felt so good and so right and so perfect.

All around them, Jaime’s followers kissed too, only now she recognised none of them. Now they were Shiqhol na Dhazzi’s followers, and there was no Brack or Marcyn, no Sophey and Dyanne, no children running about and playing. Just adults, naked, having sex in the grass, loving each other, giving that love to their leader to take to their turtle god.

This was what had happened to Shiqhol na Dhazzi, and it was happening to Jaime now too. The two men had been vessels for love, taken to The Underwater to help in the fight against Bran.

Jaime kissed her all the way to the tree – he stepped into the branches willingly. Kept kissing her as they tightened about him, worming their way between their bodies, touching Brienne but never holding her, never capturing her as they did him.

Brienne closed her eyes and kissed him harder. She could not bear it, could not –

And then she was back in the throne room in King’s Landing, kissing Jaime there, holding him in with her arms about the tree.

It was getting difficult to tell where the tree ended and Jaime began.

“I love you,” she whispered. “I love you so very much.”

Jaime could only make a choked noise in response.

“What’s happening?” Addam asked. His voice cut through the gentle lull of the singing.

“Come here,” Brienne held an arm out for him. He passed Sapphire to Marcyn and approached. Took Brienne’s hand, his hand solid and real.

Brienne kissed him. Kissed Jaime and kissed him again. “We have to say goodbye to Jaime,” she whispered.

Jaime, his teeth gritted against the pain, nodded.

“What?!” Addam blurted. “No!”

“We do,” Brienne said. “He’s going to fight Bran now.”

“And he has to die to do that?!”

“This is what this has all been for.”

“No!”

Brienne kissed Addam. Kissed him, kissed Jaime. “Just love him, Addam. Please. It’s what he wants. What he needs.”

Addam kissed Jaime. Kissed Brienne, but kissed Jaime, hard. Jaime kissed Addam too. Mouthed how much he loved him.

“No...” Addam said again. “I won’t. I can’t!”

“Addam...” Brienne said.

“No, Brienne. This is horseshit. All of this.”

“It isn’t, Addam. Bran –“

“No! I’m not going to stand here and watch the man we love die a slow, agonising death. Not for the sake of some tree.”

He pulled out of their embrace. Stalked away, his cloak streaming out behind him as he went.

On her wrists, Brienne saw the mark of the tree come to life. Strange how it had not been there until now.

Beside her, the tree creaked and tightened further around Jaime. He groaned. She kissed him again, letting him know she was there, hoping that would give him some comfort, hoping he could feel how much she loved him.

Then, Addam was back, pushing his way through the crowd ... and he had something in his hands.

The metal of it caught the candlelight as he marched his way back towards her.

It was an axe.

“What are you doing?!” Brienne cried.

“Fuck this,” Addam said. He was crying, too. “Fuck all of this.”

“You can’t! The tree!”

“Fuck the tree. Stand aside.”

Everyone in the room was silent. Horrified. Brienne stood in front of Jaime. Holding up a hand to ward Addam off. Her other hand crept to Oathkeeper’s hilt.

“What, are you going to cut me down to stop me saving Jaime’s life?”Addam demanded.

Brienne trembled. Looked him in the eye as he looked in hers.

“Are you so keen to see the end of both your husbands?” he asked.

He was right. It was madness.

“No,” she said. She put her hand down. Let go of her sword.

She stepped aside.

Addam swung the axe at the tree.

For a split second, Brienne feared the tree would kill Addam too, that it would defend itself somehow, with its branches or its magic.

But then the axe struck the tree, a solid blow, and it was just that. A tree. Bark and wood and splinters.

For all the life in the thing, all the thick branches, the rich, fragrant blossom, the tree was dead inside. It crunched and splintered beneath Addam’s blows, and in three strikes of his axe, he had cut through the branch that had Jaime’s throat.

“Help me!” he called to Brienne.

That broke her paralysis. She was there, pulling at the branches as Addam cut them, bending them, breaking them, snapping them as Jaime groaned and gasped. Then Arya joined in, too, helping Brienne snap the branches, pull them away from Jaime.

One by one, the followers joined in, too. Some running to get more axes, some helping with the branches, some just keeping the children out of the way.

Addam chopped and chopped again.

Now the tree fell apart like ash in their hands. As dead and dry and dusty as those people Bran had killed. Every branch crumbled to nothing as they pulled at it.

Finally, they cut Jaime free. He fell into Addam’s arms, gasping and near-unconscious. His hand fluttered up to touch Addam’s face, his bloodshot eyes opening and closing, weak and sweating and naked.

He had a thick red line about his throat, like a hanged man. His ribs were black with bruises, and the mark of the tree sprawled all across his body now. His arms, his legs, his back.

Nira brought him a blanket, Brack fetched him a glass of water; Brienne and Addam held him. Everyone crowded around. No one sang.

Around them, on the floor, the blue petals withered and died even as they watched. The candles guttered and flickered, and a cold wind blew through the open roof. The throne room seemed exactly what it was – a battered, sad ruin.

“What has happened?” Arya asked softly.

“I don’t know,” Brienne answered. It was the only answer she could give. She looked at the crumbling ruin of the tree, ash drifting off the stump of it now.

Jaime looked different, too. Thin and scarred and every one of his near-fifty years.

“Is it over?” asked Ireyne into the silence. She clung to her maester’s hand. “What – what should we do?”

No one answered. No one knew.

Then Addam spoke, his voice strong and clear in the hush.

“We should go to bed,” he said. “All of us. It’s the middle of the night, we all need sleep. We can worry about the rest later.”

There were some murmurs, but no one disagreed. The silence broke, then, and people started to move. Make moves for the door.

Sapphire had fallen asleep in Marcyn’s arms despite all the commotion. Brienne took her back as everyone, wide-eyed and white and bewildered, drifted out of the throne room and through the freezing muddy yard outside.

Addam helped Jaime back into his clothes. Found his cane.

Arya started to move with everyone else, but dithered and then turned back to the three of them. She had a bruise forming on her cheekbone where Brienne had hit her.

“Where should I go?” she asked. Wringing her hands in front of her. “Can I … can I still stay?”

She looked so small and so much like a child. Her large grey eyes were sad and lost.

“Of course,” said Brienne as Addam got Jaime to his feet. Wrapped the blanket about his shoulders. “Come. I’ll – let’s find you some food. Somewhere to sleep.”

Arya nodded, stepping close to Brienne as they left the throne room, almost as if she sought solace in her large frame. Brienne suppressed an urge to reach for the girl’s hand.

Addam took Jaime back to his chambers, but Brienne took Arya to the kitchens, where the embers of a fire still burned. Plates of bread and cheese and some cakes were sitting under cheesecloth, and the remains of the roasted pigs from the wedding dinner sat in the cold storage.

Arya found a plate and filled it, sitting at a bench to eat and eat and eat. Brienne poured herself a mug of ale and sat beside her, Sapphire fast asleep in her arms.

“Do you think it was bad?” Arya asked around a mouthful of pork. “What we just did?”

“Saving Jaime from the tree?”

Arya nodded.

“I don’t know. He – he was ready to die. Willing to. He thought it the only way to fight your brother.”

Arya slowed her chewing, slightly. “What if it was?”

Brienne swallowed her ale. “I don’t know,” she said again.

They fell into silence, punctuated only by Arya’s mastication and Sapphire, snoring.

“That’s his babe, isn’t it?” Arya asked then.

Brienne blinked. It had been a while since she had thought of Sapphire as only Jaime’s. “Yes.”

“Hmm. I thought you looked fat.”

“ _Fat_?!”

“When you came to the capital with Sansa, to vote on the next king. You looked fat in the face.”

“Well, thank you very much.”

Arya shrugged. “I notice things about people. I was trained to. Grey circles under the eyes, fat in the face. It’s an early sign that a woman is with child.”

“You noticed near three moons before I did, then.”

Arya grinned. “It would have been rude to point it out. Besides, my sister was … quite put out that you’d had the temerity to fuck a Lannister. I didn’t want to make things worse.”

Brienne drank more of her ale. Put it down. “Everyone was quite put out that I’d had the temerity to fuck a Lannister.”

Arya gave her a sly grin. “How dare you, Brienne? How dare you fuck a beautiful Lannister instead of withering away doing your duty like my sour-faced sister?”

Brienne looked down. “Your sister is a good ruler.”

“She is,” Arya agreed. “And she paid a high price for that kingdom.”

Brienne nodded. “Compared to what I have now, Winterfell … even Tarth … seems a cold bedmate. Not near so beautiful as a Lannister.” She looked down at Sapphire. “Or a Lannister’s babe.”

“He makes you happy.”

“Gods, no! He’s been a constant trial! More … I have made myself happy. I have taken what I wanted, I have loved my child. I have unburdened myself of my shame at being _me_.”

Arya stared at her for a long while, still eating.

“That’s what I wanted,” she said after she had picked her plate clean of the pork. “To make myself happy. To see and do things that I wished to – very few women are permitted to do that. I realised that I have no husband, nor father, my sister makes no rules for me. For all I have lost, that might as well pay some dividends.”

“This is why you sailed away? West?”

A sad smile crossed Arya’s pork-greased lips. She nodded. “I wanted to see something more than horror and death. I thought if I could fill my mind up with a whole new continent … perhaps it wouldn’t be Robb’s desecrated corpse I saw every time I closed my eyes. The sound of my father’s sword cutting his head off. The thought of my mother getting her throat cut …”

“Oh, Arya …”

“But instead my head was filled by Bran. He sent everyone mad one by one, and he forced me … _forced_ me …”

She shook so badly she had to put her fork down. Her face contorted until she was barely recognisable. Such pain. Such horror. The girl had had her humanity wrenched from her, and by her own brother. Brienne could not imagine …

She reached for the girl’s hand, squeezed it. Arya brushed the tears from her eyes, and squeezed back.

They sat in silence, Brienne sipping her ale and Arya finishing her plate. Still holding hands.

“Do you have somewhere to sleep?” Brienne asked when they were done.

Arya shook her head. Now she had eaten, she looked deathly tired, too.

“Take my room,” Brienne told her. “Top of the –”

“I know where it is.”

Of course she did. She must have been there. She must have ... “There may be a few crabs.”

“Oh. Yes. I’ll – I’ll take care of it.”

They walked together through the keep in the cold night air. The place felt different. Strange. Cold and foreboding somehow, in a way it had never done before. Brienne held Sapphire tightly as she bade Arya goodnight on the drawbridge that led to Maegor’s.

There was a vague feeling of dread, too. Brienne misliked that, so she watched until Arya disappeared into the White Sword Tower. Closed the door behind her.

Jaime was up on his feet by the time Brienne got to his chambers, pissing blood into a chamber pot and looking very sore and bruised.

“Are you all right?” she asked, looking at his bloody piss.

When he spoke, his voice was croaky and hoarse, too. “My balls got a little squeezed. Everything hurts, but … it’s just sore. Nothing broken.”

Addam paced the floor, his brow furrowed. He looked pale and shaky.

Brienne didn’t know what to say, so she put Sapphire down in the cot. Threw some more wood on the fire and poked it about until it caught.

“Are you staying?” Jaime asked. “Please stay.”

Brienne turned to answer, but he saw that he was talking to Addam.

Addam stopped his pacing. Looked at Jaime. His mouth opened. Closed again. He glanced at Brienne.

“You don’t have to worry about the tree now,” Jaime said. “I – I can’t even feel everyone’s love any more. It’s gone. You don’t have to worry.”

Addam sighed. Shook his head. “I suppose I don’t.”

“And … you … well, you kissed me.”

Addam looked away. But he nodded.

“Why?” Jaime asked.

Addam looked back. “I thought you were going to die.”

“Is that –”

“Come on,” Addam said, cutting him off. “Must I say it? We are more than Brienne’s husbands, are we not? To each other? More than Sapphire’s papas?”

Brienne didn’t dare to breathe. The two of them looked at each other now, tentative. Cautious.

“We haven’t –” Jaime said.

“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.”

“I thought it might be. A few times. And … when we were young …”

“You chose Cersei!”

“I did,” Jaime admitted. “I … we both know if we had gone on that knight’s quest of ours, if we had gone camping …”

“You feared it? You feared what might happen if we were alone?”

“Of course I did,” Jaime said, his raw voice cracking even more. “It felt dangerous. I - I was already fucking my sister, was that not deviance enough?”

“You think it deviance?”

“I did. Then.”

“But not now?” Addam asked.

“Now … _now_? We were boys, then. Now we’re men, we’ve seen much more of life, and of love. Everything is different, is it not?”

“It is.”

The two of them stared at each other for the longest moment. Addam’s eyes sad and longing, and Jaime’s steadfast and strong.

Jaime smiled.

Addam kissed Jaime. It happened so quickly that Brienne was taken quite by surprise. He closed the gap between the two of them in a stride and a half, caught Jaime about the waist and kissed him. Hard. Jaime kissed him back.

They kissed … kissed again—deep, passionate, tongue-tangling kisses.

Gods … even watching them made her wet between her legs. Her two husbands – hard and soft, both at once – bruisingly intense and yet achingly gentle. Brienne found herself quite breathless at the sight of them, lips entwined, the wet flash of tongues, their beards rubbing against each other’s.

Oh, Brienne knew what those kisses felt like – the sweet softness of Addam’s lips, the teasing twist of Jaime’s tongue. She knew how it felt to have Addam’s arms wrapped about her, how it felt to have Jaime’s hand slide into her hair.

She watched them with her mouth open. With her belly in a tight knot of want.

Addam’s hands were on Jaime’s arse, mindful and gentle on his bruised skin. Jaime’s hand was on Addam’s face, his thumb crooked into the curve of his cheekbone, his fingers digging into the copper locks at his scalp. They were pressed together from chest to cock, grinding a little. #

She could see that both of them were hard.

An involuntary moan left Brienne’s throat. Gods, had she ever seen anything quite so erotic in all her life? Sometimes in her tent at Bitterbridge, she had fantasised about Renly this way – thinking of him with the beautiful Ser Loras had been far less humiliating than trying to picture him with _herself_.

They broke the kiss at the sound of her moan. Addam held his hand out towards her even as Jaime nuzzled along the line of his jaw.

She joined them, accepting their kisses but letting them lead, letting their explorations of each other remain the focus. She helped them – helping them to undo each other’s clothes, pulling at stubborn knots for Jaime, easing Addam’s breeches down past his hips while they kissed.

They pulled her back into their embrace, passing her back and forth between them as they always did, but kissing and caressing each other, too. This was different, this was not the two of them making love to Brienne. This was all three of them – delicious, long three-way kisses where she lost track of whose tongue was in her mouth (and often, it was both!) and where she pleasured the two of them while they kissed each other. Dropping to her knees between them to take each of their cocks in her mouth. Listening to them gasp with pleasure into each other’s mouths. Pleasure she had given them.

Jaime pulled them both to his bed, grimacing as he lay his sore body back among the pillows. Addam leaned over him, his long red hair hanging over both their faces, kissing him and kissing him.

“Don’t stop,” Jaime whispered to him. “Don’t let me go.”

“Never,” Addam grinned. He kissed down Jaime’s chest and wrapped his hand around his cock, still slick and shining from Brienne's mouth.

Brienne undressed herself slowly, stunned by her own arousal. Watching the play of Addam’s muscles in his neck and shoulders as he took Jaime’s cock in his mouth, the tension in the cheeks of his arse as he thrust his own cock into the mattress.

Jaime grasped Addam’s hair, twisting and writhing under the torment of his bannerman’s tongue, curling his toes and gritting his teeth. Gods, he looked good, too – his lean, golden form bathed in candlelight, his face the very picture of naked pleasure.

A man knew how to pleasure another man, Brienne saw. She watched, enthralled, as Addam played his tongue into the groove on the underside of Jaime’s cock. She had _never_ heard Jaime moan that way, never seen him so astonished in his pleasure. She would have to try that herself.

Jaime grasped for her as she slid onto the bed beside them, wrapping his stumped arm around her ribs and looking up at her with wide, pleasure-filled eyes. She leaned over him to kiss him, his mouth tasting of Addam, but his eyes filled with love for her, too. The love they had discovered earlier that night was not diminished, not at all.

“Come here,” he whispered between kisses, and it took her a moment to grasp his meaning, even as he urged her upward so that he might get his mouth on her sex.

“I didn’t get to do this earlier.”

She smiled down at him. Careful not to hurt him, conscious that he was so tender and bruised, she straddled his face but stayed on her knees to keep her weight off him. He lifted himself to his elbows to press his mouth where she needed it.

Now it was her turn to lose her mind with pleasure. Jaime’s tongue was a wonderful thing – it danced into every nerve, filling her with joy, making her writhe and sweat and moan.

Jaime was the first to take her – they all changed positions so that Brienne was the one on her back, Jaime knelt between her legs and Addam curled about her torso, sucking her milk and moaning how he loved her, how he’d missed her, how he wasn’t the same without her. His words and Jaime’s cock brought her to a surging climax so quickly she was quite astonished.

Jaime’s rhythm grew slow and leisurely, as if he savoured every moment of being inside her. But then he turned to Addam, offered him his place.

When Addam slid inside her, he was quite the opposite to Jaime. Needy, urgent, desperate. Clinging to her, groaning his love for both of them into her neck, her mouth, her breasts.

“Hold still,” Jaime urged him from somewhere above. It took Brienne a moment to understand what he was doing.

He lay atop Addam, who was face-down atop Brienne. Brienne curled her legs about both of them, held still so that Jaime might spread the wetness of her cunt to Addam’s arse with his fingers.

Addam broke his kiss with Brienne and twisted a little so that he could see the man above him.

“Gods … with your cock?” he choked. “Are – are you certain?” His voice hoarse and needy.

“Why not?” came the reply. “You think I have not seen how fast you come to your pleasure when Brienne uses her fingers in your arse?”

“You should try it yourself,” Addam told him.

“Perhaps I will,” said Jaime with a grin.

It took them a while to get it right, the two of them wriggling and adjusting on top of Brienne. Jaime pressing forward and Addam trying to relax backwards, changing his angle, changing his breathing, widening the set of his knees to figure out how this might happen.

Slowly, inch by inch, Jaime slid into Addam. Held still so he could adjust and added more of Brienne’s wetness before he pressed further.

Addam clung to Brienne’s hand throughout, wincing if it hurt too much, groaning when it all felt good. Jaime’s hand splayed on his hip, the fingers clinging.

“Please –” Addam begged. Brienne didn’t think he even knew what he needed.

Jaime’s thrusts were too hard at first, and then too shallow – neither of them had ever done this before and it took some patience to work it out.

But when it worked – oh _gods_!

Addam’s face was the very picture of astonished pleasure – he groaned and grunted even as Jaime’s thrusts thrust him into Brienne.

Jaime too – he was arched back with his head thrown back on his shoulders, his mouth open and his breath coming in erratic, explosive pants. Moaning about how tight it was, gripping the hair on Addam’s back. Brienne knew he wouldn't last much longer.

“Oh – oh … ohhh shit!” Addam cried suddenly, and he yanked himself out of Brienne to cover her thighs in his warm seed, groaning.

Jaime followed a split second later, clutching convulsively at Addam’s hip, at Brienne’s leg around them both. He came inside Addam with a deep, shuddering moan.

The three of them collapsed on the bed, still holding each other, still kissing. Jaime still inside Addam, Addam still on top of Brienne.

Addam had his face buried in her neck, his forehead sweaty, his breath rapid and hot. He was wrecked, far more so than Jaime, who by contrast had been through so much this evening. Jaime was physically hurt, but Addam looked emotionally drained. Like he might cry. Brienne cradled him close and kissed the top of his head.

Jaime, on the other hand, looked full of life. He gingerly pulled out of Addam and limped to his washbowl with ease. He didn’t even use his cane.

He brought a washcloth back for Brienne and sat beside them both, a big grin on his face. Addam sat up slowly, still looking like a man destroyed. His hair stuck up in a wild tangle, his skin shone with sweat, and his eyes were glassy and unfocused.

Jaime laughed at him. “A little much for you, Ser?”

Addam nodded. He staggered up to pour himself some wine. Grimacing at the odd sensation of Jaime’s seed trickling out of his arse.

Brienne cleaned herself and reclined on the pillows, smiling at them both. Tonight had been …

“This is real, is it not?” she said, her voice barely audible above the crackle of the fire. “I mean … this is not the tree. Truly not.”

“Our feelings?” Jaime asked. “Gods no.”

“The tree is gone,” Addam said then. His voice sounded rich and throaty. “Gone. I …”

“Thank you,” Jaime said. Cutting him off. “Truly. Thank you.”

Addam scoffed. “I’m not sure you should thank me.”

Jaime shrugged. “Well, I _am_. We’ll deal with whatever comes next.”

“Things feel different, do they not?” Brienne said. “The city does.”

Jaime nodded. “I felt that, too. Colder … I don’t know. Not the same.”

“Not the same,” Brienne concurred. “Not the same at all.”

They had no time to discuss it further, however. There was a loud banging on the door, which woke Sapphire.

“Brienne!” called a familiar voice through the door. “Brienne!”

“Arya?” Brienne called. Cursing the girl for not thinking of their sleeping babe. She jumped out of bed and pulled on her breeches. Threw a tunic over her head.

Sapphire was most definitely awake. She wailed in the cot, so Addam picked her up.

“What’s the matter?” Brienne flung the door open. It was Arya, and she was dressed for sleep in one of Brienne’s tunics – the garment reached her knees.

“Do you mind?!” Jaime yelled from the other side of the room. Brienne realised that he hadn’t managed to get his breeches on yet.

But Arya paid no heed to Jaime’s arse. “You have to come!” she said. “You – all of you.”

“What is it?” asked Addam.

“The tree. Where the tree was.”

“You went back?” asked Brienne.

Arya nodded. “I felt something. I felt _him_.”

“Who?” asked Jaime.

“Bran. The Crab. I felt him all the way from my bed.”

Jaime’s eyes went wide. “I – I felt nothing. I feel nothing now.”

The three of them followed Arya as she raced down the stairs and out of Maegor’s Holdfast. Across the drawbridge and through the dark keep. This time, they were the only ones about.

Jaime hobbled on his cane; Sapphire snuggled into Addam’s neck. An icy wind blew about them, cold enough to make Brienne shiver in her cloak.

The throne room was dark and dead – it felt much the same way as it had when they had left it. Black ash and dead petals blew around the floor. The perfume of the tree now smelled like rotted sap.

“Here,” Arya whispered. Somehow, her voice echoed in the dead dark space.

What had been left of the tree when they had seen it last had now disintegrated, blown apart like dust. Just as the city full of people had.

In its place, there was a hole.

A deep, dark hole in the floor that rang and echoed with the sounds of the wind. The sounds of the sea. In its depths, rippling light picked out rocks, earth, trees, flowers maybe. Things moved and scuttled in the shadows.

It looked strange to Brienne – distorted somehow, like a dream, or a memory. Looking into the hole made her head swim.

“What … what is that?” Addam asked.

“Gods …” Jaime breathed. He pushed between them to stand at the edge of the hole. Peering into it depths. “This is it. This is what you were meant to do.”

“Me?” Addam asked.

Jaime nodded. “You did it. You used the love you had for me to save me … and you did it. You opened the way for us all.”

“The … way?” Addam shook his head. He still didn’t understand.

“This is what Shiqhol na Dhazzi wanted to find. This is The Underwater.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I won't even apologise for the cliffhanger this time, I really am incurable. Just one more chapter and an epilogue to go! I am super excited to get it out there and over and done with, all at once.
> 
> Massive, massive thanks to CaptainTarthister for interrupting her studies to give this a once-over. I don't deserve her.
> 
> A shout-out to my sweetheart of a reader who maintains the amazing [Us Without Each Other playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/32FUnK5tIi3Hqu9rTvjeok). Please check it out, it's a great accompaniment to the story.
> 
> If you'd like to get some teasers and updates for this story and anything else that emerges from my twisted brain, then please do consider following me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/).


	12. My Finest Act

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I will say, I think it passing odd that I am loved by one for a kindness I never did, and reviled by so many for my finest act."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Banner by the lovely [@WakingDreams82](https://twitter.com/WakingDreams82) on Twitter.

“Are you sure we have to go in there?” Addam asked.

At the head of the table, Jaime looked up. Frowned.

“Why would we not?” asked Brienne. She sat a little back from the table, an exhausted Sapphire dozing at her breast.

Addam shook his head. “Because we don’t know what’s down there, and it’s like to be dangerous?”

“Bran is down there.” This was from Arya, who was looking at the same thing Jaime was – maps of the keep. Maester Quagg had found these in the library; some dated back to the time of its construction. They had spread them out on one of the long tables in the ballroom

Jaime nodded in agreement. Shoved the maps to one side. “These are useless,” he declared. “That’s not a hole to what’s below the keep. It’s something else.”

“The Underwater?” Addam said. “Do we even know what that is?”

“Tis what the Old Man of the River and the Crab King have fought over their entire existence,” Maester Quagg said. He pointed at one of the many books he had open on the tabletop. “In Essos where these religions originated, this was thought to be literal, of course. That crabs and turtles fought one another beneath the surface in rivers and lakes.”

“Hold on,” Addam said. He picked up the book the maester had pointed through. Leafed through the yellowed pages. “These books are old. _Very_ old. This … belief, this religion … it’s centuries-old, at least.”

“At least,” Maester Quagg nodded.

“And how old is Bran Stark?”

“Eight-and ten,” Arya said. “He was born a year after I was.”

“Eight-and-ten,” Addam repeated. “How could he be in books that are centuries-old?”

“Bran had every memory of the world in his head,” Jaime said. “He could … visit them, too. Somehow. He took me with him, when I arrived at the city to confront him. He showed me things, things from the past … in Winterfell … things that I had not seen.”

“So he could … are you saying he could have visited these times somehow? Centuries ago? Established this Essosian religion?”

“I don’t know.” Jaime didn’t really know anything. “Tis plausible, at least.”

Arya looked him in the eyes, her grey gaze troubled. Traumatised. “When I sailed West of Westeros, Bran was on the throne. He was no Crab King then. And yet when I saw him, when he drove my crew to madness a few weeks later, then he _was_.”

Maester Quagg cleared his throat. “If he visits the past, could it have been that you saw a Bran from the future?”

“I – I know not,” Arya said. She looked thoroughly confused. “He looked much the same as he did when I saw him in King’s Landing last.”

Jaime swallowed. “Whatever the semantics of it, there must be a purpose to this—the hole in the floor. The book said that Shiqhol na Dhazzi looked for a way into The Underwater – it is not recorded if he ever found one. But he must have had a reason. Some purpose for going there.”

“Tis a shame the latter part of _For Love of The Old Man_ is so vague,” the maester said.

Jaime nodded. Opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off by Arya.

“He has to be stopped,” Arya said. “Bran. That is reason enough, is it not? One with no thought for others should not have such power, the power to inflict his will on anyone. He may be my brother and a Stark of Winterfell, but he is not a man, not in any true way any more.”

“Very well,” said Addam. He looked down, at the table. “I agree that Bran is not fit to wield near-godlike powers. If we can stop him, then we should at least make an attempt.”

“Yes,” said Brienne. Sapphire slept in her arms now, so eased up from her chair and rejoined them at the table. “But … who? Which of us?”

“All those who can wield a sword?” Addam suggested. “Those we have trained?”

Jaime shook his head. “Tis not about swords. It will not be that kind of battle.”

Both Brienne and Addam looked to him with wide eyes.

“What kind of battle will it be?” Addam asked. “Are you going to use flowers and love? Gods forbid … is this where we have to do the ritual fucking?”

“I hope not,” Jaime laughed. “Though the gods know the sight of your hairy arse might be enough to scare the crabs away.”

Addam grinned. He was amused, of course, but there was heat in his gaze, too. He was clearly thinking about the same thing that Jaime was.

In the cold morning light, what had happened upstairs in Jaime’s bedchamber seemed near impossible. But nonetheless, it had happened. His blood still sang with the carnality of it, his ears still rang with the sounds of Addam’s pleasured cries. For all his jests about the hairiness of it, Addam’s arse had excited Jaime more than he ever could have imagined.

“Perhaps the Old Man will help us?” Brienne suggested, pulling Jaime out of his lascivious thoughts. “The turtle?”

“I don’t know,” Jaime admitted. “I have seen him, in dreams, in visions, but … does he have powers that equal Bran’s in some way? We know so little about him.”

“ _You_ have powers,” Arya said. “You fought Bran before, did you not? And … you undid whatever he did to me. You and the others here.”

Jaime nodded, but … “I don’t know that that works any more. The tree …”

Everything felt different without the tree. Jaime could no longer feel the love that surrounded him, the very thing they had built their community on. The mark of the tree on his chest had dissipated too. When he had first been released from the tree, it sprawled all over his body, dark and livid. In the hours since, it had yellowed away, like an old bruise – now, he could not see that it had ever been there.

Other things, too.

The sun was well up, and no one had come to make breakfast this morning. Before, things had just … worked. Everyone helped, everyone did tasks that needed doing, everyone worked together. Now all he saw around the keep were ghosts – the remains of people. Drifting. Disjointed. Finished.

Jaime could no longer remember the melody of the song they sang together. The scent of the blossom that had drifted through the throne room. The thought that he had been naked in front of all those people troubled him, too …

All of that had died with the tree.

Now they had to somehow bring all his followers together to go into The Underwater. Together.

Yes … yes, that was the answer.

“We _all_ have to go,” Jaime said.

“Everyone?” Brienne blinked in surprise. Her eyes went to Addam. His to her.

Jaime knew their thoughts without them having to voice them – it would be difficult to defend so many. But they were both still thinking like soldiers. As if there would be an army down there to fight, with steel and shields and siege weapons. “Everyone,” he said. “This is what they came for.”

Brienne tightened her lips, but she nodded nonetheless.

“The children too?” Addam asked. “Sapphire?”

“No,” Brienne tightened her grip on her sleeping babe. “Absolutely not.”

“Someone would have to remain behind to care for the children. Defend them,” Maester Quagg pointed out. “That would mean … _not_ everyone.”

“I don’t care,” Brienne growled. “That dark hole is no place for a babe, not under any circumstances.”

“Nira, perhaps?” Jaime suggested. “She fights well, and Sapphire knows her. Loves her well.”

Brienne swallowed. He could see the terror in her eyes. No man was a truer knight than Brienne, none more brave than she, but the fear of never seeing her child again … it truly terrified her.

“Nira,” she consented with a determined nod.

The next thing to do was to gather everyone. In the absence of the tree to summon them, Brack ran about the keep ringing his handbell, rousing people from their beds and calling them to gather in the throne room.

The crowd was subdued – there was palpable fear in the air, and everyone shrank well away from the gaping hole where the tree used to be.

No one was keen to go down there, Jaime found. His people’s sense of camaraderie and community had frayed almost completely. Where they had once worked for common goals, now people bickered and sniped. Pointed out each other’s faults, sniped at each other. Some flatly refused to engage at all.

Ellion walked out in a huff. Brack tried to reason with him but ended up shouting. Dyanne wanted a more explicit plan, to know what they would face. She had too much to lose, and Sophey agreed. The stableboys said their training hadn’t been adequate – they’d only had a few sessions with swords. Ireyne had none – she wasn’t sure what she could contribute, unless perfume and fudge-making was going to be a factor.

Jaime sighed, despondent, standing as close as he dared to the hole. He was no king at all, he realised. Without the tree – these people were no better than the squabbling lords at court he had been exhausted by all his life. He had no patience for this kind of thing, and no skills to deal with it, either.

In truth, the tree had ruled them, not him. Not him at all.

“I shall go in,” he said eventually, with a sigh and a shrug. Around him, people fell into resentful silence. “I will break my fast on some of the wedding pork, eat until I’ve had my fill, and then … with or without you, I am walking into that hole.”

No one said anything. Jaime looked around at them all – people he loved, people he considered friends, the truest friends he had ever had. Only last night, he had been one with them all. They with him, too.

“I shall hold out my hand behind me as I enter. If someone takes my hand, and holds out theirs for the next man, and the next, and the next, we have nothing to fear. We know this. We may not have the tree to bring our love to the fore of our hearts any more, but it is _there_. The Old Man of the River chose us, each and every one of us, because of the things we do for love. Bran knows this, and he fears it.”

Was Bran even capable of fear? Jaime knew not, but he knew that he had a sense of self-preservation. He knew that he would fight.

The crowd had grown silent, now. There was something thoughtful about them. Something abashed.

“Come,” Jaime turned to Addam and Brienne, flanking him on the stairs where the tree had once been. Where the Iron Throne had been before that. “My wife. My husband. I think you will follow me, at least. Let us eat one last meal together as a family before we do what it is we are destined to do.”

He left the throne room without further comment. Sad, but determined.

Most of the followers ate too, bringing the wedding scraps from the kitchen up to the Queen’s ballroom one last time. No one served the food. No one cleared away.

It was not the same, Jaime had to admit. Even the candlelight seemed muted.

But Addam was in high spirits, laughing and playing with Sapphire. His arm about Brienne, shooting longing looks at Jaime, too.

Brienne wept openly as she said goodbye to Sapphire after breakfast, the babe oblivious to her mother’s tears. She was eager to play with her toys, with Nira and the other children. She ran off into the map room without a backward glance.

Jaime realised he was crying, too. How could he ever have envisaged this when he had met Cersei here that day, when she had shown him the floor painted with the map of the Seven Kingdoms? Watching his daughter, his daughter by Brienne, no less, run across it, her golden curls bouncing.

If this was to be their last sight of her, at least she was happy. Going into that dark hole would be easier with Sapphire’s joy in their minds.

Brienne and Addam armed and armoured themselves, and tried to persuade Jaime to don something protective as well. They even found him some Lannister armour in the back of the storeroom, and it would have fitted well enough, but … it did not feel right to wear it.

He was not going into The Underwater as a Lannister, as part of an army. He was going in as himself—one man holding the hand of another, who held the hand of the woman they loved. He could at least count on that.

The three of them, together to the last.

They held each other with heavy hearts one last time. Shared kisses and a long, longing embrace.

Then, they made their way back to the throne room.

Part of Jaime expected it to be empty – the keep felt a strange place now, as did his own head. He had become so accustomed to feeling surrounded by the love of others – it had felt as radiant and warm as sunlight, as soft and welcoming as his own cosy bed. Now, things were muted and lonely. Hostile, even, to a degree.

But as he entered, he caught sight of Brack, dressed in a worn linen cloak, a hat on his head. Marcyn, wrapped in a shawl. Behind them were Ellion and Alara, holding hands, wearing armour and with swords at their sides.

Babhor, Saquar and Sorra chatted among themselves – they were dressed in soft leathers, and they carried their instruments with them – a harp, a fiddle and a horn. Maester Quagg and Ireyne were dressed as if going to a ball – she wore a gown that Cersei would have thought excessive.

Arya was there too, of course. She wore a squire’s leather jerkin and breeches, hugging herself in a cape that would have been long on Brienne. A skinny sword at her hip.

Dyanne and Sophey, flushed from the pleasures of their marriage bed, held hands. Dyanne wore plate and mail, Sophey a woollen dress.

There were near a hundred of them altogether, and even as Jaime stood back to take them all in, more poured into the throne room. The two stableboys. The two brothel workers, the young couple from Rosby.

People Jaime had known as intimately as he had known his own lovers. People who had journeyed miles to share their love with him.

All that may have vanished with the tree, but they all remembered. They were all his friends. They were all his family. All of that was real.

Jaime felt tears prick his eyes as he walked between his followers. Many of them reached for him, pulled him into a hug, slapped his back. Ireyne even let her hand wander to his arse as she hugged him.

Then, before he’d consciously realised where he was headed, Jaime stood before the hole in the floor. He turned to face it, to look into its depths.

It was dark down there, darker than it should be, right below the open roof. The daylight didn’t penetrate it – it was another place entirely. Not truly attached to the throne room at all.

He reached out and poked his cane into the hole. Pulled it back. The cane seemed the same.

So he stepped into it. Into the dark depths of The Underwater.

There wasn’t a sheer drop, more like a gradual slope that led down and down. Jaime walked it gingerly, descending. Descending. As his head reached the mouth of the hole, he remembered what he had promised to do.

Actually, it was quite impractical. Beneath Jaime’s feet, the ground felt loose. Unsteady. Sand, or shale maybe? There was no way he could let go of his cane to hold out his hand. Instead, he had to offer his stump.

A warm hand closed over it at once. Calloused. Strong. He knew immediately that it was Addam.

Jaime looked back to see Brienne clasp Addam’s free hand. She held out her other for Arya.

They were coming then. All of them; it was decided.

Jaime moved deeper into the hole.

Inside, the air was old. Fetid, ancient, beyond stale. There was the smell of the sea, salty and with a note of putrid fish. The smell of fire, too, clung acrid to his nostrils.

It was dark. So dark. Addam clutched to Jaime’s stump; Jaime wished he had fingers with which to clutch back.

They were in a tunnel, Jaime decided after a few yards. His eyes adjusted to the gloom, or perhaps the gloom adjusted to him?

The walls were sodden black earth. Now Jaime could taste the peat of it, and the smell of the sea went away. It was wet. Earthy. Here and there, the white roots of weirwood trees protruded from the dirt like glowing bones.

Beneath their feet, the ground felt soggy. Shifting. The space was narrow – in places Jaime had to twist sideways to wriggle around a root or a rock. Things skittered in the dark.

Then, there was light ahead of them. A wan orange, it danced like water on the walls of the tunnel – torchlight, Jaime realised. The tunnel widened; the walls turned to stone.

Abruptly, Jaime realised where they were. He had been here only once, in the aftermath of the Battle of Winterfell, when he had been aimlessly following Brienne as she helped with the cleanup effort. When he couldn’t bear to believe he was still alive.

“The crypts,” whispered Arya, two people behind. She was the first to speak since they had left the throne room. “These are the crypts at Winterfell.”

Yes. That was right. Ahead stood a statue, its stony face severe and unforgiving. It was a likeness of Ned Stark, as cold and judgemental as he had been in life. If anything, the cold stone looked more amiable, Jaime thought with a smirk. The roots of a weirwood curled about the statue’s legs. The torchlight guttered and flickered.

It was the crypts, but not really. As they proceeded through the stone archways, the statues got bigger. Sterner. More glowering, more terrifying. The Kings of Winter had been a dour lot indeed, but these were positively monstrous. Huge overhanging brows, severe cheekbones. Hands like claws that gripped their iron swords.

Jaime looked behind himself. Addam took it all in, wide-eyed and grim. Brienne’s face was lost in the gloom, but he saw that wrinkle between her brows was furrowed. Behind her, Arya’s eyes were huge. She muttered something Jaime couldn’t hear, but he thought it might be “This isn’t right.”

He knew – he could feel it. This wasn’t Winterfell, not truly.

Ahead lay the exit – stairs that led to a stone door. It opened easily with a push from Jaime’s cane.

They came out into Winterfell’s courtyard, thick with snow, bathed in shadows. It was night. The wind swirled snow around them; the snow smelled of smoke. Burning bodies, the way it had after the battle. After they had burned the dead.

“Jaime …” whispered Brienne. “What is this?”

Jaime couldn’t answer.

Behind, all those who had followed him unlinked their hands as they emerged from the crypts into the courtyard. Standing. Staring at their surroundings. A hundred people, silent, full of fear and wonder.

It was Winterfell – the layout was exactly the same, every detail. Every tower, every wall, every door and window and every scratch on every brick. Atop the walls, huge dragonglass spikes, far bigger than anything they had installed as a defence against the dead. Some of them were as big as a man, as big as two men. They gleamed in the moonlight – razor-sharp like claws. Crab claws, Jaime thought.

No sooner had the thought of crabs crossed his mind than he saw one, scuttling through the snow ahead.

Then another. And another. A stream of them, black and shiny as the dragonglass. The rushed across the courtyard, climbed the walls. Scuttled into windows.

“Bran,” whispered Arya.

“He’s here,” said Addam.

Addam seemed to be taking this well, Jaime thought. For a man who had seen nothing of this until now. He stood steadfast at Jaime’s shoulder. Warm and strong.

“What – what is _that_?!” gasped Ireyne suddenly. She pointed to the west, or what would have been west at Winterfell.

Jaime span – there was something. Something _huge_. A creature of some kind, towering over even the tallest of buildings, looming in the snow. It was the shape of a person, but the limbs were so _long_. So thin – a little like those of a dragonfly.

The thing lumbered in their direction – emerging further from the blizzard. It had long, lank red hair that swang over its face. It was dressed in a long, grey gown.

“Sansa!” Arya cried.

By the gods – was she right? Yes … the thing was Sansa Stark – pale-skinned, red-haired, tall and slender. On top of her red hair sat a wolf-headed crown.

The thing turned in their direction – lightning-fast. Let out a terrifying sound, a mindless moan of torment. It crouched, and then vaulted a wall. Coming at them. Coming at them, _fast_.

“Run!” screamed Brienne.

Everyone ran. Save Jaime – no sooner as he had taken a step than his useless, twisted feet got caught in his cane. He fell on his face amid the crabs and the snow.

“Come on!” yelled Addam. Brienne pulled him up. Held him up, her big arm around his waist. Dragged him across the courtyard, hauling him near-bodily. Gods, she was so strong. Most of the time, his feet didn’t even touch the ground.

There was a tower, to the east. The door was open, the warm glow of a torch inside. Jaime saw Brack – he pushed his way inside first. Held the door open for the others. They piled in, cramming themselves into the small space. Some climbing the stone stairs partway, some pressing into the corridor beyond.

Brienne dragged Jaime inside. Slammed the door shut behind her. Threw the bar across.

The Sansa-thing crunched into the tower at speed. Wailed. Raked claws across the door from the outside, screaming and splintering. Everyone covered their ears.

“Sansa!” Arya said again. “What did he do to Sansa? Is that truly her?!”

Jaime had no idea how to answer that. She – she was so big—a monster. Stretched. Deformed. Was it her, or a representation of her, looming over Winterfell in the way she did? Queen of the North.

“I can’t let that happen to her,” Arya said. She grabbed Jaime’s clothes, desperately clinging to his tunic. “Did he do that? Is it her?”

“I don’t know. I’m so sorry, I don’t –”

“No!” she cried. “No, no, no, no, no!”

The very thought of it seemed to drive Arya to insanity. She scrambled up before anyone could catch her, taking a bounding leap for one of the windows. She tore open the shutters and leapt outside, drawing the sword she kept at her waist.

“Arya!” Brienne called after her. She dragged Jaime to the window.

Arya did not respond. She landed at the feet of the Sansa-thing, calling her sister’s name quite desperately. Pleading. Begging.

The thing turned to her. Used her huge hands to part her hair from her face. Beneath, her visage was so beautiful. Pale, cold. Blue-lipped as a corpse. Her lips trembled – for a moment, Jaime thought she was going to cry.

Instead, she vomited crabs. A tide of them, black and writhing, like in the fisherman’s nets he had seen at Lannisport. At King’s Landing.

They engulfed Arya instantly, pulling her to the ground beneath them, kicking and screaming. More poured from Sansa’s mouth, rushing for the open window, quicker than they could react. Brienne threw Jaime backwards. Addam dived for the shutters.

He was too late. He was not strong enough.

The crabs swarmed in, running everywhere. Over the walls, over the ceiling. Up Addam’s arms, into his sleeves. He yelled out – suddenly there was blood on his tunic. The crabs were pinching him – cutting him, their claws razor sharp. Slicing lines into his flesh.

“Run!” he yelled. “For the gods’ sakes! Run!”

Everyone ran. Some ran up the stairs, some away down the corridor. Screaming and crying out where crabs got to them, cutting them. Brienne hauled Jaime onto her back. Swatted a crab off her neck. Another off her hair.

Jaime held onto her for dear life, his legs around her hips and his arms clasped about her neck. A piggyback, he had called it as a child. They ran down the corridor together, desperate to escape.

He saw Addam, covered in crabs, being pulled to his knees. Yelling and fighting. People were dashing in front of them, collided with them, the corridor turned, and he lost sight of Addam. The corridor was dark. The ceilings low. Everyone was screaming.

“Brienne!” Jaime screamed, into her ear. “Addam!”

“I know!” she yelled back. But she kept running.

Just as they rounded a corner, the floor in front of them erupted. A flagstone lifted, seemingly by itself, and another great stream of crabs poured out from beneath. Brienne grunted. Threw herself down a side passage, Jaime still clinging to her back.

Ahead, there was an open window. Crabs surrounded it, running in from outside. They were everywhere.

There was a door. It was ajar. Brienne shouldered it open and flung them both inside, so hard that Jaime tumbled from her broad back and fell to the stone floor.

Brienne barred the door behind them. Panting. Jaime searched the room for any sign of any crabs. There were none.

“Are you all right?” he asked Brienne. He saw no blood on her, but – “Addam, he –”

Brienne didn’t reply. Just stared—wide-eyed, white-faced, at the room.

For a moment, he didn’t understand. It was … a bedchamber? A fire roared heartily in the hearth, candles burned all around. The bed was covered in furs. On the table beside Jaime, there was a flagon of wine and two goblets.

Oh.

It dawned on him, belatedly. This was Brienne’s bedchamber. The room they had spent that month in, fucking as much as they could to stave off his inevitable betrayal.

He looked at his boots. He could see Brienne tremble.

“This is your room,” he said. “Perhaps we’re safe here? Perhaps you –”

Then, behind him, from the bed, he heard the sounds of kissing. Of course he did. When had Bran Stark ever passed up the opportunity to watch people fuck?

Their other selves were both by the bed. Brienne was naked – Jaime only in breeches. She pulled at the laces, her eyes wide as she saw his hard cock beneath.

Oh …

 _Gods_.

He remembered that expression. This was their first time.

“Brienne …” he said, just as his past counterpart shoved hers back onto the bed. Mounted her frantically, kissed her frantically. Brienne kept up with him, but she was hesitant and clumsy. Her hands on his back. Her hands on his arse. Squeaking with surprise as he put his hand between her legs.

He remembered their first time as being very intense. Very passionate, quite overwhelming, in fact. He did not remember that it had been that way because he was a boorish oaf.

He watched himself push inside her. Well, s _hove_ might be more accurate.

“Ow!” she said.

She’d said _Ow_?!

Her hands grabbed at the furs. She had her eyes closed, tight. Fuck, he’d _hurt_ her?

The other Jaime groaned. Entirely wrapped up in his own pleasure. Thrusting far too quickly, far too hard. What in the gods’ names had he been thinking? Addam would have slapped him if he’d seen this.

Thankfully, Brienne hadn’t had to endure it long. After less than a dozen thrusts, his counterpart came. Clutching at her. Moaning.

Nonetheless, the other Brienne held the other Jaime. Gazed at him as though he were something impossible, that he’d given her a precious gift.

His Brienne hid her face. Looked away.

The other Jaime got up from the bed. Naked, still hard.

Jaime blinked in surprise. He hadn’t got up right after, had he? He remembered getting under the furs. He remembered watching Brienne until she fell asleep. He remembered that sick, guilty feeling building in the pit of his stomach—the urge to get back to King’s Landing already there.

But this Jaime got up. His eyes were dark, almost full pupils, and he was looking at Brienne. At the _real_ Brienne. As he strode towards her, he changed. Hunched over, his legs crooked, his hair and beard longer. Clothes covering his nudity. Scarred and gnarled and full of rage. He marched towards her as fast as his cane would allow.

“Are you _fucking_?” the other Jaime demanded. Just as he had when he had caught her and Addam taking a bath together. He turned to the real Jaime now, too, his face a twisted picture of irrational rage. “Do you think this _hurts me_?”

“No …” said Brienne. Her voice was little more than a horrified whisper. “Please don’t.”

“He’s got under your skin, hasn’t he?” the other Jaime demanded. “Ripped you to pieces, tied you in knots until all you can think about are those beautiful green eyes. He’s made you betray everything you ever stood for, just to please him and his glorious golden cock.”

“Stop!” Brienne yelled.

The other Jaime ignored her. “See? He’s got you! I bet you think you’re in love! Don’t you remember what he’s like? Don’t you remember what he did to you?”

She drew her sword – held it before her in trembling hands.

“Don’t you remember how he turned you from the Maid of Tarth into the Kingslayer’s Whore?”

Brienne closed her eyes.

“Perhaps this will help you remember.” He picked up one of the glasses from the table. Threw it at her face.

This time, she did not duck in time. The glass struck her cheekbone, shattering into a million, million …

They were crabs. Crabs all over Brienne, on her body, on her clothes. In her hair.

She let out a blood-curdling scream. Dropped her sword to tear at them, even as they cut her with their claws. Pulled out chunks of her hair, scrambled into her mouth as she screamed.

Jaime ran towards her, not caring if they got him too, not caring about anything but Brienne.

Brienne …

Brienne grabbed him. Shoved him. Did she think he was the other Jaime in her panic?

He had no time to think on it, no time to understand. She shoved him so hard he fell. Against the window, against the shutters, which crumbled to dust as he touched them. There was no glass behind.

Jaime fell out of the window, and gods, he was so high – as high as the tallest tower of Winterfell, as high as the tower he had pushed Bran from. The ground rushed up to meet him, and he landed with a sickening crunch of bones. The pain was worse than the bricks.

Jaime died. He died again. When he woke up, he was Bran.

Bran, crushed. Dying in the tree in the throne room. He felt Bran’s mind, his horror and terror at the end of his own existence. He saw a million million lifetimes flash before his dying eyes.

Bran.

Bran.

Bran’s mind, reaching. Crying for something, for something called Summer. Summer was supposed to be the answer. Summer was supposed to be there.

Instead, reaching wildly in his last seconds, Bran found a mind much smaller.

It was the only one, and he took it.

Jaime didn’t understand what he was feeling at first, only that it _hurt_. That it wasn’t right, and Bran knew that it wasn’t right, but he did it anyway, and it tore him in two. Jaime screamed. Writhed in the snow.

When he opened his eyes, Bran was there. Sitting in a weirwood tree.

“I had no choice,” he said. His voice was as flat and emotionless as ever.

“I don’t understand,” Jaime said. “What – what did you do?”

“The Starks have the blood of the First Men,” Bran explained. Jaime knew this, of course. It was a point of pride for them, was it not? “I am a Greenseer. One of the most powerful to have ever lived.”

“Yes,” Jaime said.

“I am also a skinchanger.”

“A – a skin … you mean – you can control animals? Enter their minds and use them as your own?” Jaime had heard stories of such men as a child. Bedtime stories, fairy tales.

“Yes.”

Realisation dawned. “And this is what you did when you died. You reached out to take an animal’s mind for your own.”

Bran nodded. There was a ghost of something on his face that might once have been considered a smile. “I did.”

Jaime didn’t see what there was to smile about. Such a thing was an abomination, by the laws of gods and men. “What – what did you find?”

“It was a crab.”

Oh. Of course. “Did – did it work?”

“I don’t know. This … this is that moment. All that you see around you happened in the few seconds after you killed me. All of this is my mind, trying to take the crab’s. It made The Underwater. This moment, completely devoid of time. Eternal and unchanging. From the beginning of time to the end.”

Bran had lost Jaime again. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t think it matters if you do.”

Bran turned his head. He looked a little surprised. “Oh,” he said. “Here’s the turtle.”

Jaime sat up. Bran disappeared.

He was no longer in snow, no longer at Winterfell. He was in a forest clearing. Verdant and rich and warm and green. It looked a little like the forest in the Westerlands, where they had lived with Weslar and Kiren. A little like the forest where he had promised to take Addam camping, before he betrayed him.

Jaime looked around for a turtle. Instead, some people approached.

He recognised them – there was Ellion – there Sorrah. Maester Quagg and Ireyne. Dyanne and Sophey. His people, all of his people.

Then, Addam pushed through the crowd. He ran to Jaime’s side, falling to his knees to embrace him. Kissed him. Held their foreheads together.

“Brienne,” Jaime managed to gasp. “Brienne, is she –”

“Here.” And she was there. Big and solid and real, getting to her knees as well to hold them both.

“What happened?” Jaime asked between kisses. “You – the crabs. The other Jaime –”

Brienne looked pale at the memory. Her hand trembled on Jaime’s leg. “Bran knows how to fuck you up, doesn’t he?”

Jaime nodded. Pressed his lips against hers, hard. He thought it would take a long time to get over seeing both of them fall.

“I love you,” he told her. “I love you both.”

“As we love you,” she said, and kissed him again.

“How did you survive?” he asked.

Addam got to his feet. Brushed his breeches down. He turned to the others that stood behind them, and Jaime realised there was one face that did not belong among his followers. He was tall and willowy, dark-skinned and handsome. Long, shining black curls.

Addam turned to the man. “Jaime, this is – “

“Shiqhol na Dhazzi,” Jaime finished for him. He had never met him, never seen more than a crude drawing of the man, but somehow, he knew him.

“Jaime Lannister.” The man spoke with a thick accent, his voice rich and melodic and so, so compelling. He had done nothing more than speak his name, but already, Jaime was drawn to him. “The Old Man... He whispered your name to me many times. I knew that I had to find The Underwater. Find you.”

“Me?”

“It took me a long time, and finally, I had to die to do it. My tree crushed me, as yours did to the Crab King. But it brought me here. We were meant to do this together.”

Addam drew close again, his hand at the small of Jaime’s back. “He stopped the crabs,” he said. “Him, by himself. He held them back.”

Shiqhol na Dhazzi opened his shirt. Showed the mark of the tree on his chest. Thick and full and dark, in a way that Jaime’s had never been. “This holds the crabs back. They have no power in the face of our love.”

“The things we do for love,” whispered Jaime. This ... He understood now.

If what the vision of Bran had told him was correct, if The Underwater were a manifestation of the moment Bran had tried not to die, then it made sense that love was so powerful here.

Bran had no love left in him, had no true understanding of it, and no way to fight it.

It had been the force that Jaime had used to fling Bran from the tower, that he had used to crush him with the black tree. Love had been the reason he had returned to King’s Landing, again and again. Misguided, twisted though it had been for Cersei, love had always ruled Jaime’s life. Here, he was so powerful.

“What do we do now?” he asked Shiqhol na Dhazzi.

Shiqhol na Dhazzi smiled a smile so beautiful that Jaime felt near-compelled to kiss him.

“Now we make this a place for turtles,” he said.

As he spoke, the forest around him changed. Every tree became a black one, blossoming with beautiful blue flowers. There was the scent that Jaime had forgotten. And there was that feeling, too, the feeling from all of his followers, their love for each other, their love for him. He had missed it so much.

It all became clear, then. This was what they had to do.

He smiled at Shiqhol na Dhazzi. He smiled back.

“Shall we?” Jaime asked.

“It is what we were meant for,” Shiqhol na Dhazzi replied.

Jaime put his arms about Addam and Brienne, and moved on.

As they walked through the forest, the turtles joined them. Hundreds of them, plodding beside them, small and resolute. The song echoed through the forest, and to the rest of The Underwater beyond.

They were coming. This was it.

As they walked, Jaime and Shiqhol na Dhazzi remade The Underwater. Places that they recognised began to appear among the trees – the hut was the first. A line of Sapphire’s napkins blowing in the summer breeze, Sunchaser eating hay in the lean-to he had made with Weslar. And there was the rock by the river, the flat one where he had scrubbed the napkins every day.

He wanted to stop. Rest there. Eat a bowl of Kiren’s soup, walk in the woods with Weslar and set traps for the day. Brienne squeezed him as they walked past. She knew—she did.

Next, they saw the house of Shiqhol’s grandmother. A simple stone dwelling, the smell of sweet spiced chicken coming from the open door. The longing on his face was almost palpable – Jaime saw his struggle.

He cried something in his own language, something sharp and shocked and sad.

Jaime took Shiqhol’s hand. “These are things we are meant to find comfort in,” he said. “Things that will make us want to stop.”

Shiqhol nodded. But he looked longingly again at the door. Now there was singing coming from within, a lone woman’s voice, singing a soft, lulling melody. Jaime recognised it. It was the song that his followers sang to heal.

“Your – your grandmother. That was her song?” Jaime asked.

Shiqhol nodded. “If I was hurt. If I could not sleep.”

“We sing it too,” Jaime told him. “We knew not why. And it heals us. Soothes us.”

Then, abruptly, they were indoors. For a heartbeat, Jaime wondered if Shiqhol had somehow taken them inside his grandmother’s house.

But no – this place was no stone hut. It was a bathhouse, the walls and ceilings bedecked in soft, blush-pink silk. Steam rose through the air, the scent of which was soft and sweet and spicy, all at once.

They moved cautiously ahead, between the overflowing baths, through the heady air.

“What is this?” Jaime asked Shiqhol. “I don’t recognise it.”

“Neither do I,” Shiqhol said.

At Jaime’s side, Addam bent to dip his fingers in the nearest bath. It was not water that steamed within, it was thicker than that on his fingers. Shinier, too. Addam looked at Jaime and brought his fingers to his lips to taste.

A huge grin spread across his handsome features. The kind of grin he always got when he was about to rip the piss out of Jaime. “It’s Brienne’s cunt,” he said. Barely suppressing his mirth.

“What?!”

“This place. Pink silken walls, hot and steamy … warm and wet?” He held up a wet finger to Jaime’s mouth. “Taste!”

Jaime licked Addam’s finger. The taste was, indeed, familiar.

“You see?” Addam asked. “Places that give you comfort? This is Brienne’s cunt!”

Brienne blanched and blushed at the same time. Addam was almost falling over himself laughing; Brienne looked horrified.

If Jaime had been tempted to stay _here_ , he had no chance. Brienne grasped him by the arm and quickly dragged him out. Addam still pissing himself laughing.

Outside was a beach. Black sand, black rocks. A striped evening sky. The water raced up the shore – they stepped into it as they left the bathhouse.

Ahead of them, a girl crawled across the sand. Gibbering to herself, her hands raw and bloody from the stones.

“It’s Arya,” whispered Brienne.

Jaime knew it was Arya. He had seen it before, the night she came to murder them in their beds. This was when Bran had forced her to dig up the claw, so that she might use it to kill them.

Brienne ran to the girl, helped her to her feet.

“Sansa,” Arya whimpered. Confused. Looking from one face to another. “I – I was …”

Her sword was gone. Her face was cut and bloody from the crabs. She was the only one left with damage, Jaime noticed. Brienne and Addam had not a mark on them from their ordeal with the crabs.

“Where are we going?” she asked, looking around her at all of the people. All of the turtles, too.

“We’re going to find Bran,” Jaime told her.

Arya nodded. “I know where he is.”

She turned and pointed up the beach. There, the cliffs grew craggier. Taller. There was a dark opening at the base of one of them; the entrance to a cave.

“There,” she said. “It was there I found the claw. He’ll be in there.”

“Then that’s where we’ll go.”

The singing began again, the song that had been sung by Shiqhol na Dhazzi’s grandmother, that soft throb of throats that felt like a sweet, healing lullaby.

The cave was pitch black inside. Sunlight didn’t penetrate even a yard inside.

Inside, they heard water. Running water, trickling down the walls. Inside, crabs scuttled everywhere, trying to escape the turtles.

Then, as they stepped into the enveloping darkness, suddenly, there was light.

They were in the Great Hall of Winterfell, and Bran was dying on the floor.

Bran was crushed. A heap of powdered bones, floppy flesh. Not even breathing. Half a crab.

His arms had been replaced by crab claws. His back was half a shell. One of his eyes protruded from his head, black and shining. The sight before them was grotesque. Disgusting.

Everybody stared at it. Frozen.

“Hello,” said a voice from behind Bran.

Jaime looked up. Bran was there, too. A boy of ten, the way he had looked when Jaime had pushed him out of the window.

He sat at one of the tables, his maester beside him, a quill and parchment before him. A boy at lessons. He smiled at Jaime. A real smile, full of a young boy’s joy.

“Hodor,” he said. “They’re here. Help me?”

The simple-minded giant that Jaime remembered from the Winterfell yard came forward. Picked Bran from his seat. He stepped over the dying, jellified mess that was Crab Bran on the floor and brought Bran to see the assembled people.

Arya shrank away, hiding behind Brienne like a terrified mouse.

“He’s not going to win,” said child-Bran.

Jaime looked down at the thing on the floor. “He doesn’t look like he is.”

“This is the best he can do. Live forever in his dying moment—half in and half out of a crab.”

Jaime swallowed. He felt sorrow for the young man, despite his atrocities. There was a desperation to it, a cowardice, too – but it was, at least, a human desire of sorts.

Arya spoke, peering out from behind Brienne. “Who are you, then?”

“I’m part of his struggle,” child-Bran said. “I’m the things he remembers about his own life. I suppose you could say I’m what’s left of Brandon Stark.”

Jaime screwed up his brow, remembering the conversation he had with Bran beneath the weirwood tree at Winterfell.

_I’m not Brandon Stark any more. I’m something else now._

“He doesn’t like to admit you exist.”

“He fears me,” child-Bran said with a shrug.

“Why?”

“Because I’m the one who is trying to die.”

Beside Jaime, Shiqhol na Dhazzi gasped. He fell to his knees.

Jaime didn’t understand.

“I know how to find peace,” Bran said. “Through love. That’s what my mother always said when she talked about death. The Tully way was to be sent downriver on a boat, with all the love you had in life surrounding you. That’s how I want to die. Like my grandfather’s father, and his father, and his father. An old man in the river. The Tully way.”

“The – the _old man_?”

 _Oh_.

It all made sense now. Finally, Jaime saw.

“You – you’re the Old Man of the River. The turtle.”

Bran nodded. “All of this … it’s our battle. Him … the Crab King, trying to live. And me, the Old Man of the River, trying to die. One second, spread across the whole of time. The Underwater.”

Jaime didn’t know what to say. There was a profound beauty in it, somehow. The boy he had almost killed for love wanted to die. And to die, the boy had reached out to the man who had tried to kill him, needing love. A poetic circle, of sorts.

Jaime fell to his knees too, though he was far more clumsy about it than Shiqhol had been. He wanted to cry.

“Thank you for your love, Ser Jaime,” Bran said. “It’s all I need to win.”

Jaime blinked. He was filled with light, then darkness. Then love and pleasure.

When he opened his eyes, he was in his bedchamber in King’s Landing. In his own bed, wrapped in his blankets, his cane by his side.

He woke to the sound of talking. Laughing. Children playing.

He could see Sapphire, running around, her curls bouncing, her nose running, her cheeks red from excitement. He saw Brienne, looking tired and careworn, talking to Arya. The door to the chamber was open.

Addam sat beside his bed on a chair, a mug of soup cradled between his palms. His hair tangled, his face dirty. His eyes closed in exhaustion.

People came in to see Brienne – some of them worried, some of them looking resigned. Brienne was reassuring them, but she was worried herself, he could tell.

“What’s amiss?” Jaime asked Addam, sitting up with the blanket still wrapped around him.

Addam blinked himself out of his dozing state. “You’re awake,” he said.

Brienne turned around at the sound of his voice. Squeezed the arm of the woman she had been talking to and made her apologies. She came to sit on the bed beside Jaime, worried eyes searching his face.

“What – what’s amiss?” he asked again. “What happened?”

“We’re out,” Addam said. “For most of the day now.”

“You were asleep,” Brienne told him.

That he had gathered. “No,” he insisted. Nodded over at the woman by the door. He recognised her, but he couldn’t recall her name, not at all. “What – what happened?”

“There are people in the city,” Brienne sighed. “Not – not people with us. The spell is broken, I suppose.”

Jaime nodded. He could feel that. The woman by the door – Marcy? Marcyl? She felt like a vague memory now. He saw that she was looking at Sapphire in the same way, too. Fondly, but like somebody that she’d known a decade ago.

“What are they doing?” he asked. “The people in the city.”

“Not much, as of yet. Looking around, from what we can see from our vantage point. None of them has come as far as the keep.”

Jaime nodded.

“Should we – should we close the gates?” Brienne asked. Her eyes were on Addam, who was massaging his temples as if he had a headache.

Jaime shrugged. “Leave them. Let them come if they want to, I …”

“People are leaving, too,” Brienne told him. “Our people. They – they … a lot of them want to go home. Arya did already – she went back home to see her sister. To make sure she’s all right.”

“Of course,” Jaime nodded. “It’s over.”

“Is it?” asked Addam, opening his eyes again. “I … I’m not even sure what we did.”

“Gave a boy his humanity back?” Jaime shrugged. “Helped a man to die when he wanted to? I – I can’t say I’m too sure either. But I think we did it. I think we accomplished what we needed to.”

The three of them sat in silence, the fire crackling in the hearth.

“What should _we_ do?” asked Brienne.

“I think we should leave, too,” Addam said. “I, for one, don’t want to be here when they try to work out what happened to everyone who used to live in King’s Landing.”

“From Kingslayer to Cityslayer,” murmured Jaime. “You have a fair point.”

They fell into silence again. Sapphire chattered to herself, playing with her toys on the rug.

“Together?” Brienne blurted suddenly, so suddenly she looked quite startled herself. “I – I mean … is that what you want? What we want?”

“We are a family, are we not?” Addam asked. “Three knights and a babe?”

“Yes,” agreed Brienne. Her smile was relieved. Happy.

“Then, together. Of course together.”

Jaime reached for both of them. Pulled them into an embrace and held them hard. Nothing about _this_ had changed—nothing about his feelings for Addam and Brienne.

Addam squeezed him back, placed a soft kiss on his lips and then Brienne’s. Then he sighed a world-weary sigh and got to his feet with a groan. “I’ll ready the carriage,” he said. “Pack some clothes. Some food – we should leave within the hour, I suppose. To be safe.”

Brienne nodded. “I’ll get our things from the White Sword Tower. There’s a trunk up there I can pack. Some bags, too.”

She stood up, stretched, and then put her armour back on. Addam helped her with her straps, and they left together. Holding hands.

Jaime eased himself out of bed with the help of his cane; his legs were stiff and sore as all the hells. He limped to his dresser. Started pulling piles of clothes out.

“Papa?” Sapphire stood beside him, holding up her little doll.

He looked down at her, and she looked up at him.

They both smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I won't say too much here because I'm going to post the epilogue in a moment.
> 
> But I hope you enjoyed it! More notes after the next one ...


	13. The Kingslayer's Whore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Aye," added the one-eyed man. "The Kingslayer's whore."  
> She flinched. "Why would you call me that?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Banner by the lovely [@WakingDreams82](https://twitter.com/WakingDreams82) on Twitter.

The waters around Tarth were not so blue as Brienne remembered. The sky not so clear, the buildings not so tall, either.

The place seemed old and weathered. Sad, somehow. Perhaps it had declined along with her father’s health, perhaps her cousin Trevas was not so diligent as she would have been in his place.

Perhaps it just didn’t seem like home any more.

She did not take a room in Evenfall Hall, but stayed in the town, instead, in an inn. She was not invited to her father’s funeral, and no one knew she had come to the island at all. He might have been angry at the thought of her seeing him dead, but Brienne was long past caring what her father thought.

She brought Sapphire with her, too. Her father would definitely not have liked _that_.

But she was a woman of near-fifty, now. The master-at-arms to House Marbrand and a respected knight, for all her history. The shame seemed far in the past, and faintly ridiculous, as well.

There had been talk, of course, when Addam had gone home with Jaime, Brienne and a babe in tow. When he had installed them in rooms at Ashemark and spent every waking moment with the three of them.

His father had _hated_ it. Told Addam he was bringing ill-repute to his house, that his scandalous living situation would make them a laughing stock. That the smallfolk wouldn’t tolerate it, and that there would be a peasant uprising.

But he did not disown him. Did not throw him out of the castle, or forbid Jaime and Brienne to be seen at court. Slowly, grudgingly, they became part of Ashemark. Part of House Marbrand.

It was never going to be the same as it had been during that strange time in the capital. Out in the real world, there was always shame to be thrown, scorn to be heaped. But there was no peasant uprising, the laughter hurt no one, and now, near a decade after they had arrived, no one so much as batted an eyelid. Brienne could just do her job. Train her recruits, drill with her men. Live her life.

Jaime, too.

He was a quieter man these days. Content to be in his garden, content to tend to his flowers and his vegetables and to spend time with his daughter. Content just to be himself – a husband, a father.

“That is Evenfall?” Sapphire asked as they guided their horses from the ferry. She peered up at the castle on the hill, a hand shading her eyes from the glint of the sun on the white marble walls.

“Yes,” Brienne told her.

“Tis rather smaller than Ashemark,” Sapphire remarked. She sounded a little disappointed as she mounted her bay – a gift from her Papa Addam on her eleventh nameday two moons past.

Brienne mounted her horse, too – slower, these days, than her daughter, thanks to how her pelvis ached on wet days. Sapphire was strong and as big as her mother had been as a youth, and she had her Papa Jaime’s skill with the sword, too. She was clever, quick-witted, and she was confident with it.

Brienne did not know what the future held for her bastard daughter, but she did not fear for her ability to deal with it.

They trotted along the Tarth coast road together, passing merchants and travellers and a mummer’s group arriving for her cousin’s investiture. Sapphire’s curious blue eyes sparkled in the sunshine, her golden braid alive against her back as she rode. For all that had happened, Brienne could not help but feel a sad little pang, as well.

It would have been good to have raised her daughter here. Perhaps she should have tried harder with her father; perhaps she should have just come home.

But those were useless thoughts now. Sapphire had been well-raised at Ashemark, and with two papas who loved her well. Brienne would not have changed that for the world.

Selwyn Tarth was laid in state in the Sept of Evenfall, so that the townsfolk might pay their respects to the lord who had ruled them for the past four decades.

Brienne, fresh from a meal in the inn and dressed proudly in her armour and the colours of House Marbrand, joined the queue, behind two shepherds and a minstrel.

The Sept smelled much the same as it had in Brienne’s youth – incense and candles and the smell of Septas and Septons, that strangely medicinal scent that they always had. Suppuration, Jaime had once suggested, in one of his more wicked moods.

She held Sapphire’s hand, tight, as the queue moved slowly through the doors.

Should she be here? She had not considered what would happen should someone recognise her. She had been gone near two decades, but she was distinctive, a six-foot woman in armour. And Sapphire did look so very much like she had as a girl.

Sweat trickled under Brienne’s arms, beaded on her upper lip. Part of her wanted to pull Sapphire away, get back to the inn and their horses, ride for the Westerlands as hard as they could.

But she stayed in the queue. Let the Septon offer her a blessing, although it had been a long time since she had prayed to the gods with anything more than habit behind it.

Sapphire did, as well.

Brienne’s father lay on a bier in the centre of the Sept. He wore his robes of office, his arms crossed over his chest, his sword and the shield of the Evenstar atop him.

As she drew close, Brienne had to stifle a gasp. He looked very little like the man she remembered.

Selwyn Tarth had always been big. Larger than life in a way, with his warm, huge hands and his huge warm laugh. He had been a jolly man, quick to anger, but quick to forgive. It hurt to see how death had made him small. Thin, certainly, from the disease that had claimed him. But everything looked small now. His hands, his feet, even his face looked too small for the stones on his eyes.

He was not the man she remembered, not at all.

Strangely, that was something of a relief. Part of her had been terrified she would see the man she loved so well in her childhood and revert to that little girl she had been. That she would break down, that the lost years would break her, that she would be filled with sorrow and regret.

She was not sure of how she felt, but … it wasn’t _that_.

“Hello, father,” she whispered softly as she filed past his body. “It - it’s me.”

But then she was moved on. There was no time to linger; Selwyn Tarth had been well-loved, and the queue to pay respects was long.

But then … in his hands …

Brienne had seen that he held his sword as soon as she had entered the Sept. Starlight was no Valyrian steel, but its glittering silver hilt, adorned with crescent moons and starbursts, was a beauty. As a girl, Brienne had coveted it more than any of Tarth’s treasures.

The sword she had expected.

But in his palm … against the pommel … he held a long, blonde braid. Tied tight with twine at both ends. Hacked blunt and uneven by an unsteady hand.

 _Her_ hand.

The braid was Brienne’s – the last vestige of her childhood in Tarth. She had cut it off herself, the day she had decided she would leave to join Renly.

She’d discarded it, or she thought she had. Somehow her father had found it. Somehow, he’d kept it. Somehow it had still been important to him, all these years. Important enough that he held it, even now, in death.

Brienne felt weak. She clung to Sapphire’s hand as they left the Sept. Not looking back. Not sure she could cope if she did.

She didn’t understand.

He had kept her braid. Kept it as if she had died, kept it to remember her by, the way he had kept her mother’s shoes, and Galladon’s toys, and two little silver rattles belonging to Alysanne and Arianne. As if Brienne were yet another of his beloved children who had been taken too soon.

He had loved her, still.

And yet he had never contacted her. Never written her a letter or summoned her to Tarth. Never wanted to see the reality of her again. Not even as he lay dying.

Brienne did not understand.

She and Sapphire walked back to the inn, in silence.

They got back to their room. Sapphire set to work tending the fire, and went downstairs to fetch her mother some tea.

Brienne took off her armour. Washed her face. Brushed her hair. Changed her sweaty gambeson for a linen tunic and leather jerkin.

“Mama, would you like to go home?” Sapphire asked as she returned with the tea. She set the steaming cups on the tabletop and looked at Brienne with a look that was pure Jaime. “If we leave tonight we could be back by the new moon.”

Brienne sighed. Sapphire had been so curious to see Tarth.

“I …”

“How oft does the ferry run?” Sapphire asked. Now she was like Addam, practical and patient.

“It goes back and forth across the straits all day,” Brienne told her.

“Then finish your tea, and we will resaddle the horses.”

“No,” Brienne said. “I – I’ll not run—tis just feelings, just memories. I will be all right.”

Sapphire took a sip of her tea. “Tis not running, mama. This is no battle, no one could accuse you of being craven.”

“I know, but …”

It was the last thing. The last thing that troubled her, the only thing she had never put to bed. She knew that if she went home now, she would never have resolution.

“Perhaps seeing the funeral procession will help,” Sapphire suggested.

Brienne nodded, though she wasn’t quite sure it would. The braid troubled her – the braid troubled her a _lot_.

She wondered if her father _had_ perhaps thought her dead?

She had never sent _him_ any messages, either – she had disappeared from King’s Landing shortly after Sapphire was born, then she had been in hiding at the farm, at the hut in the woods, and then in King’s Landing. She had certainly never let him know that she was serving House Marbrand. She assumed word might have reached him at some point, but, of course, that was only supposition.

Why had she not sent him a message?

His final letter had always felt so … final.

He had been unkind, and unfair, and at that moment, when the resolution she thought she’d found after Jaime’s death had been ripped away from her, she had _needed_ her father, needed her home. Returning to Tarth had been her security from the day she had cut off that braid and ridden out of Evenfall’s gates on her way to Highgarden.

Losing it had been far harder than losing Jaime. She was not sure she could have handled her father’s rejection a second time.

Brienne spent a restless night thinking on it, tossing and turning in the over-soft inn bed before rising as the sun came up. She made up her mind to visit her cousin.

Trevas was the son of her father’s sister, and so did not bear the Tarth name. His father had been a hedge knight who had died soon after Trevas was born – Brienne had been a child, and so she could not recall precisely how it had happened.

She remembered Trevas himself as a pleasant boy, tall and thin and with a fun sense of humour. He’d not been good at swordplay, but he was well-read and interesting to talk to. They had been friends, of sorts.

So after breakfast, Brienne took Sapphire to the gates of Evenfall Hall and asked that she be permitted inside.

One of the guards told her to fuck off, but the other looked at Sapphire and at Brienne, at the height of them both, and clearly saw the family resemblance.

She was summoned before her cousin in less than an hour.

Trevas had greyed badly, and lost most of his hair in the process. He was just as tall and just as thin, and his eyes were anxious as Brienne was escorted into what had been her father’s solar.

“Hello, cousin,” Brienne said, trying to put him at ease. “You look well.”

“As do you, Brienne.”

“My thanks. And may I – may I present my natural daughter, Sapphire Storm.”

It could, of course, have been perceived as a great insult to bring a bastard child to an official meeting at court, but to his credit, Trevas did not seem to take offence.

“Well met, Sapphire,” he said with a nod in the child’s direction. “A lovely name for a fair maid.”

Sapphire bowed.

“I am surprised to see you here,” Trevas told Brienne.

“Lord Damon Marbrand, who I am sworn to, informed me of my father’s death.”

“Oh. Yes, I – word was sent out to all the houses once Uncle Selwyn finally passed away. I was hoping to introduce myself and to start a good relationship. For trade and … security purposes.”

“Of course.”

“I did not know you were at Ashemark.” Trevas fidgeted. “Is that why you’ve come?”

“Why?”

“Because you wish to stake your claim to Tarth?”

Brienne blinked. “No!”

Trevas seemed to let out a sigh of relief. He went to a side table, poured himself a glass of wine. Offered one to Brienne. She declined.

“Forgive me, questioning your motives like that, cousin,” Trevas said. “We had not heard from you in so long. You … you did not respond to your father’s letters.”

“Letters? He told me I could not come home. He – he told me – ” She glanced nervously at Sapphire – the girl knew of her parents’ pasts, of course, including how Brienne had been disowned. But Brienne had left the term _Kingslayer’s Whore_ out of her recollections. Telling her that would serve no one. “He told me I had brought shame to our house.”

“Yes – yes, but … as soon as he sent that, he regretted it. He sent another bird not five heartbeats later, instructing the maester at King’s Landing not to give you that letter. Telling you that you could come home.”

“He – he did?”

Trevas nodded. “More letters too, many many more in the moons that followed.”

“I – I didn’t get them. Not one.”

“I am grieved to hear that. Your father hoped, then … and for many years after, that you would come home. With your babe. He – he did not even know whether you birthed a son or a daughter.”

Brienne took a deep, trembling breath. _Tyrion_. Tyrion fucking Lannister. Even then, he had been pulling strings, manipulating events, conspiring to get his heir. Of course he hadn’t shown her the letters. If she had gone home to Tarth, then he would have had no chance of wedding her to Jaime, no chance of wedding her to Addam.

Tyrion had, of course, lost his head for his conspiracies in the end, but this … this …

“Thank you for the information, cousin,” Brienne said. Only the slightest tremor in her voice. “It will take me a little time to understand, I think.”

Trevas looked concerned again. “I am sorry,” he said.

Brienne nodded. “As am I.”

There was silence for a moment. Outside, gulls called to each other atop the towers of Evenfall, their insistent, obnoxious voices taking Brienne back twenty years. Some things hadn’t changed at all.

“Will you join us for supper tonight?” Trevas asked. “We were going to hold a family vigil for your father in the small courtyard – my wife and I, our sons, my mother too. It would be nice to have you there.”

Brienne swallowed. “Thank you, Trevas, but no. I … I came only briefly, to say goodbye to my father. My duties for Lord Damon …”

“Of course.”

Did he know it was a lie? Brienne was uncertain, but perhaps it didn’t matter. “I must start my journey back to the Westerlands this afternoon. But … please. Send my regards to your family, particularly your mother. Aunt Anaris was always so kind.”

“You are welcome here any time, Brienne. I hope you will come back, Sapphire too. Tarth remains your home, even now your father has passed.”

“That is very kind, Trevas. I thank you.”

“You are more than welcome. Always.”

Brienne and Sapphire rode away that afternoon, with the gulls circling overhead and the soft, lazy whisper of the sea all around.

“ _Will_ we come back, mama?” Sapphire asked once they were on the ferry, watching the gleaming white walls of Evenfall grow smaller and smaller.

Brienne sighed. “Yes,” she said. “Of course. I have still to show you so many things there that I promised I would.”

“They don’t matter, mama. That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” She reached out to squeeze her daughter’s hand. “I have lots to think on. Lots to make peace with. But I promise I will bring you back, so that you might know my home, as I did.”

Sapphire squeezed her hand back. Put an arm around her mother’s waist. “I look forward to it.”

The two of them stood in silence as they sailed across the Straits of Tarth, towards home, towards her husbands, towards the life she had made for them all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it's done, almost a year to the day since I started writing it. I know it's not perfect and I know I've made a lot of mistakes, but I have mostly had a great time writing this. And it's done what I wanted it to do, I feel a lot better about this ship and writing for it, so you can expect me to be a lot calmer from now on in my stories!
> 
> Some thank yous. Thanks first to all the readers who have made it this far, and thanks for the comments and the encouragement, particularly during that difficult time a few months ago where I didn't want to carry on with this. I have saved every single message I had, and I treasure them. They mean so, so much.
> 
> Particular thanks go to the amazing, wonderful, superlative recipient of this fic, CaptainTarthister. She's been unbelievably supportive, unbelievably understanding and endlessly helpful at all hours of the day or night no matter what's been happening in her life. She is a jewel of a human being and I could never be more grateful to have anyone in my life.
> 
> Also huge thanks to the reader who maintained the fantastic [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/32FUnK5tIi3Hqu9rTvjeok). It's been a joy to have and to listen to, and I'm so touched and so grateful to her. 
> 
> I have another story in the pipeline which I will be starting to write very soon. I hope you will join me for that and for others, by following me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Thank you all for being with me on this journey. If you were all here I'd be hugging you and crying.


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